


Grasping at Air

by shoeberray



Category: Naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-12-19 17:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11902623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoeberray/pseuds/shoeberray
Summary: Shikamaru finds himself in a peculiar situation, four years in the past stuck in the body of Sasuke Uchiha.  With no clue of how this came to be and no precedent for his predicament, Shikamaru finds himself lacking a direction for his investigation.  Where do you start when you don't even have straws to grasp at?





	1. Chapter 1

As soon as Shikamaru woke up, he noticed that something was off. Quickly, he opened his eyes reaching for his kunai only to find that it wasn’t in its usual place under the pillow. His surroundings gave him the reason that the kunai wasn’t there. The room was definitely not the hotel room he had fallen asleep in the previous night. Glancing around, he took in the bare interior trying to find some clue of where he was as he made the hand seal for a shadow possession jutsu. Some clothes hanging in the closet caught Shikamaru’s eye. He could see a blue shirt with an Uchiha clan symbol on the back of it. The shirt appeared to be the same type of shirt Sasuke used to wear and the same size. Who would have Sasuke’s old shirts? Was he for some reason in Sasuke’s old apartment? That didn’t make sense. Maybe he was in Sakura’s apartment and she had stolen some of Sasuke’s shirts to sleep with at night. No. It didn’t make sense for him to be there either. Sakura and him were never particularly close.

Shikamaru cautiously got out of bed and fell in shock as he saw his legs and body much smaller than they should be. He had been so focused on his surroundings, he hadn’t noticed what was so strange about himself. This was not the first time he had been in someone else’s body, - with Ino as a teammate, you got used to that sort of thing- but this was the first time that he hadn’t had a say in the matter. Shikamaru briefly considered the possibility that Ino mind swapped him with a kid as a joke, but dismissed it immediately. Ino knew that crossed a line. Unfortunately, this left him without a suspect. He couldn’t find any motive for any other Yamanaka, and he didn’t know anyone else that was capable of a mind swap jutsu.

Shikamaru carefully maneuvered himself around the room looking for a reflective surface while keeping a lookout for traps or other people. He opened a drawer and found a stash of weapons. He reached for a weapon to help protect himself and to look at his reflection. At the sight of said reflection, Shikamaru almost dropped the kunai. The face looking back at him looked like Sasuke, the same face he remembered from the last time he saw it three years ago.

“Kai!” said Shikamaru as he realized this had to be a genjutsu. When nothing changed, Shikamaru frowned. This had to be a genjutsu. Gripping the kunai tightly, he brought it down into the side of his leg. Pain flared up where he’d stabbed and Shikamaru muttered a curse as he removed the kunai. Ok, he was either caught up in the genjutsu of a really powerful ninja or this wasn’t a genjutsu. The only other alternative was that he was the victim of a time travel mind swap combination jutsu. For the time being, Shikamaru considered that to be a very low possibility since he had never even heard of time travel jutsu. Of course, he had learned not to count out anything when it came to the abilities of other ninja. After meeting an actual immortal, nothing seemed too crazy.

Since standing around trying to think of what happened did nothing to help Shikamaru figure out his situation, he decided he should explore. “It would probably be best to bandage up the leg too,” Shikamaru thought as he glanced at the blood dripping down the thin leg to the floor.

There were two other rooms in the small apartment, a kitchen and a bathroom where he found the proper materials to treat his self-inflicted wound. Nothing in the rooms held anything of interest to Shikamaru, so he decided to venture outside. Upon exiting the door, he paused and surveyed his surroundings. His eyes paused on the Hokage monument. Tsunade’s face was missing as if this actually were three years ago. Nothing else was out of the ordinary. Unsure of what his next move should be, Shikamaru hesitated. What did one do when he appeared to wake up three years ago in the twelve year old body of someone that betrayed the village? Shikamaru was pretty sure there was no logical reaction to something so completely illogical.

Without a goal in mind, Shikamaru walked towards the Nara compound keeping himself alert and watching everyone he passed by. About ten minutes into his travels, Shikamaru spotted a Sakura that looked the same age as he did heading in the opposite direction. After a moment's thought, he decided to let her see him, so he could determine if she acted like she was supposed to. Sakura spotted Shikamaru and started grinning crazily as she picked up her pace.

“Hey Sasuke! Why are you going in the wrong direction?” Sakura asked as she neared him. The wrong direction for what? If Shikamaru accepted the premise that he was back in time, she would probably mean a mission or to go train with the rest of the team. As far as he knew, Sakura had no other reason of knowing what direction Sasuke would be heading in. Shikamaru couldn’t think of a good response so he stayed silent causing Sakura to pout before brightening suddenly.

“Well, since we’re both here, we could walk to the academy together!” At her words, Sakura reached out to Shikamaru. Shikamaru quickly evaded her and put a significant distance between himself and Sakura. For all he knew, this was the ninja that had put him in a genjutsu and planned to attack him as someone he trusted. Sakura looked even more put out than before. “Um, it’s okay. We don’t have to walk together.”

Shikamaru made an ambiguous noise and started heading to the academy. He figured that it would be best to just play his role as Sasuke for now. Apparently Sakura had decided to take Shikamaru’s noise as permission to walk with him because she kept pace with him as he continued. Sakura tried making conversation to which Shikamaru responded with more noncommittal sounds. All in all, it made for a very uncomfortable trip.

“So it was to the academy not a mission or training. This must be close to four years back then.” Shikamaru was not pleased with this new revelation. The farther back it was, the harder it would be to remember how everything was supposed to be.

Shikamaru entered his old classroom and looked around at all his former classmates feeling a wave of nostalgia. He examined everyone finding nothing out of the ordinary for now. Some of the kids weren’t there, but he was still clearly early. Shikamaru’s gaze fell on his best friend, Choji, who scarfed on his usual bag of chips. Usually, Shikamaru showed up right before class time, so he didn’t find it strange that Choji currently sat alone. Would someone else be occupying Shikamaru’s younger body or would it be his younger self? Unless it was just an illusion.

“Sasuke?” Sakura’s voice broke through Shikamaru’s thoughts and he realized that Sakura had been saying something to him.

“Hmm?” Shikamaru replied.

“Well, I asked if you wanted to - um- sit together maybe?” Sakura gazed at Shikamaru with an intensity that made him want to run. How would Sasuke react to this? Shikamaru just glanced at Sakura and then turned and made his way to a seat in the front. It seemed that Sakura took his response as a negative this time as she didn’t end up sitting next to him. Shikamaru sighed in relief. He was supposed to go out on a date with Temari today, not end up on the receiving end of the advances of an eleven year old version of Sakura. How did such a promising day end up such a mess?

Listening to an academy lecture as a chunin was not an experience Shikamaru would recommend to anyone. If this was a genjutsu, what was the plan? Bore him to death? Shikamaru wished he hadn’t chosen to try and act like Sasuke. He wanted to fall asleep already like his younger counterpart. The younger version of Shikamaru had slouched in a few seconds before class and taken his seat next to Choji before promptly falling asleep. If someone else occupied his body, they knew enough about him to convincingly act like him. Ino had never shown up causing Shikamaru to wonder where she was. Ino had missed class at times due to flus or the cold, so her absence wasn’t too unusual. Still, Shikamaru felt he should investigate a little.

After class, Shikamaru waited for all the other students to leave and then walked over to Iruka sensei. “Ah, Sasuke, how can I help you?”

Shikamaru figured there was no way to do this while staying in character, so he just went for the direct approach. “Do you know why Ino wasn’t here today?”

If Iruka was surprised before, he was absolutely floored now. “Ino? Her parents contacted me a bit before class. She has the flu.”

Shikamaru nodded. So nothing unusual there. He started to leave, but Iruka held him back. Shikamaru raised an eyebrow in question. “Why did you want to know about Ino?” Iruka looked hopeful as he asked the question. What he was hoping for, Shikamaru didn’t know.

“The Yamanaka clan jutsus sound very… useful,” Shikamaru answered. Hopefully, that was in character enough even though Sasuke had never shown any interest in the Yamanaka clan as far as he could tell. Iruka’s face fell in disappointment, and Shikamaru again wondered what he had hoped for.

“Sasuke, the Yamanaka clan holds their jutsus as a clan secret. They won’t let anyone else learn them.” Shikamaru just shrugged and left without Iruka holding him back this time.

Not knowing what else to do, Shikamaru wondered off to a training ground to see how good he’d be in a fight with Sasuke’s body. He shouldn’t be able to move as fast, throw as fast, or hit as hard, but he thought he might still be able to use all his jutsus. None of Shikamaru’s jutsus were very chakra intensive, and Sasuke’s chakra reserves as a near academy graduate shouldn’t be too much less than Shikamaru’s reserves at sixteen.

Shikamaru found out he was right about not being as physically capable before. Even his accuracy decreased significantly as he tried to adjust to a shorter arm and height. His attempts with jutsu fared much worse than he had predicted. Whereas Shikamaru’s chakra had always been stable, slow, and easily controlled, at the moment it flowed quickly and recklessly. Too much escaped the first time he tried to make a clone. The clone collapsed to the ground pale and sickly looking.

Shikamaru shook his head at the dismal clone and dismissed it. He started trying to gather the wild chakra again and felt it rush out too quickly again. Shikamaru completed the jutsu to stop the flow and another failed clone collapsed on the ground. He should have guessed since Ino had told her teammates about the differences between different people’s chakras, but she had never seemed to struggle so much. As for himself, he’d never used chakra during a body swap. Anytime he’d been involved in a mind swap, he did so for interrogation purposes. Take the appearance of someone the target trust, and they reveal information to someone they shouldn’t without even realizing it. Shikamaru decided to do chakra control exercises before attempting another jutsu.

By the end of the day, Shikamaru successfully climbed a tree without hands. He nearly cried from a combination of relief and utter exhaustion. How did Ino adapt to different chakras so easily? He held a whole new level of admiration for his female teammate.

Shikamaru’s uneasiness with his situation kept him up all night with his mind whirling over the mystery over who and what had done this to him. Mind swaps only lasted a couple hours at most when Ino used them, but Shikamaru remained in young Sasuke’s body for a full day. As far as he knew, no Yamanaka could hold the jutsu that long. As far as he knew, no one could use time travel jutsu. With so little information about his predicament, Shikamaru didn’t know where to start his investigation. Everybody was a suspect, but no one was more suspicious than anyone else. Except maybe whoever occupied his body.

When Shikamaru took a seat in the front of the class the next day, he angled his body so he could see when his younger self entered the classroom. He would have to approach the potential imposter on his way back to the Nara compound, but he figured he should check to see if the person outed himself by acting strangely before then. As it turned out, this day was not the day Shikamaru confronted his counterpart.

Ino’s entrance into the classroom caught Shikamaru’s attention since she had been sick the previous day and hadn’t shown up. Shikamaru stared as Ino looked around frantically until her eyes met his. Ino glared at him and then started stomping towards him. Shikamaru raised his eyes in surprise. Ino was downright obsessed with Sasuke at this age. She never got angry with him. “What the fuck did you do?” Ino spit out after she stopped right in front of Shikamaru.

Everyone in the class started to stare, and Shikamaru held back a groan. He had a pretty good idea of who had swapped with Ino now. “I didn’t do anything. Can you please be more discrete?”

“We’re having a talk. Right now. Walk in front of me. I’ll follow you outside.” Ino folded her arms and stared Shikamaru down with ice cold anger. Shikamaru hesitated before turning his back on Ino and heading to the exit. He felt pretty certain that Sasuke wouldn’t harm his own body at least. As he neared the exit, Shikamaru heard a tussle and turned back around. Sasuke-as-Ino was being held back by Sakura and he bristled with anger.

“Ino-pig, what are you doing with Sasuke? You can’t just order him around to get him alone!” Sakura yelled.

“Move out of the way,” Sasuke bit out. He looked ready to kill Sakura, so Shikamaru figured he should step in.

“Sakura,” Shikamaru started. The absolute adoration that filled Sakura’s eyes as she looked at him almost made him roll his eyes. “Let Ino go. I need to talk to her about something.” Sakura look crushed but moved aside for Sasuke who brushed past her without a second glance. Shikamaru continued walking to Sasuke’s apartment.

“So you stole my old place too?” Sasuke asked calmly as he followed Shikamaru into the apartment. The anger Sasuke had shown earlier was now completely absent from his voice and facial expression.

“I didn’t steal anything. I’m not the one responsible for this mess.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“You expect me to believe that you’re not the one that did this? Who knows what kind of stuff you got up to with Orochimaru?”

“Why would I want to be in your weak child body? I’ve spent my time with Orochimaru training my body and my Sharingan. I was finally ready to fight Him, but now I can’t because I have the chakra reserves of a three year old, and I can’t even use ninety percent of my jutsus.” Sasuke told him all of this completely devoid of emotion, but Shikamaru was sure the earlier anger was lurking around. What Sasuke had said were things Shikamaru had already thought of during the walk. Sasuke didn’t appear to have any motive, so he could mostly be removed as a suspect. One down, a million to go.

“First of all, I’m not Ino,” Shikamaru clarified. Sasuke’s eyes widened briefly and he opened his mouth to speak, but Shikamaru continued before he could. “Second of all, I agree with your reasoning and don’t think you’re a suspect. Now, you have access to Yamanaka clan information and you should research everything you can about their mind swap jutsus. Ask Ino’s father when you can, ask any of the more talented members of the clan, and find a way to access all their secret scrolls.”

“And what makes you think I’ll do what you want me to do?” Sasuke quirked a blond eyebrow.

“Because you want to be back in your body as soon as possible. Because you know that needling the Yamanaka clan for information about their jutsus is a good place to start.”

“A good place to start would be interrogating you. You’re the one occupying my body and you still haven’t even told me who you are.”

“I’m Shikamaru. You can ask me whatever you want, but I would advise you against trying to attack me and hold me captive. I’m a lot stronger than you currently are.” At Shikamaru’s words, Sasuke let his anger show on Ino’s face before he managed to control it enough to hide it.

“Are you and Ino in on this thing together? I’m assuming she’s the one controlling your body,” Sasuke said gazing at Shikamaru intently.

“I already told you I didn’t do this, and Ino didn’t either. Ino is probably younger me, but I can’t be sure. I was going to approach whoever it was after class. I intended to be subtle instead of acting out of character and suspicious like you.”

Sasuke scoffed. “Whoever did this already knows exactly who I am, and anyone who isn’t involved doesn’t matter. No one’s going to jump to the conclusion that Ino’s mind isn’t in her body just cause I act a little bit out of character.”

“You don’t think Ino’s parents are going to realize when their daughter becomes a completely different person?” Shikamaru asked pointedly.

“I’m sure they will. And I’m sure they’ll chalk it up to her maturing. I’ll ease them into it.” Shikamaru remained doubtful, but he let it go for now.

“So I’m guessing you didn’t really have the flu yesterday?” Shikamaru wondered what had really happened when Sasuke woke up to find himself in Ino’s body.

“I think it’s time we approach Ino or whoever is in your body,” Sasuke ignored Shikamaru’s question.

“We might have to wait for tomorrow.” Sasuke started to protest, but Shikamaru cut him off. “We’ll have to wait for myself to get out of class so that we don’t make another scene. By that time, Ino’s parents will have already found out that you ditched class. You’ll have to meet up with them and tell them why you ditched class. While you’re doing that, we miss our opportunity to confront our target alone. I’d go without you, but I’d rather have backup in such an unknown situation. Even if the backup is you.”

Sasuke ignored the insult and rolled his eyes. “Why do I have to confront Ino’s parents? Confronting the likely enemy is more important.”

“Because we don’t want anyone being more suspicious than they have to be. Because we have something that needs to be fixed before we confront a potential enemy.”

“And what’s that?” Sasuke asked boredly.

“Training. I can’t control your chakra enough to even do a clone jutsu yet. You’re going to teach me how. You’ll tell Ino’s parents that you skipped class to train with me. That way, you’ll have an excuse already prepared when you sneak out later. If you can sneak out, that is.” Naruto used to push Sasuke into to doing things by implying he was incapable and riling him up. Hopefully, that method still worked. From the way Sasuke seemed to smirk in mild amusement, Shikamaru figured it didn’t work as well as he had hoped.

“Still can’t control your chakra? I mastered Ino’s in under two hours yesterday.” Still smirking, Sasuke started moving towards the exit. “Are you going to follow me to the training grounds or did you already give up?” Shikamaru followed feeling reluctantly amused by Sasuke’s childish behavior.

“You really can’t even do a clone jutsu?” Sasuke asked upon reaching the empty training grounds near his apartment.

“Are you going to gloat again?” Shikamaru already felt bored with Sasuke’s attitude.

“Who’s gloating? I was just trying to figure out if I should take your advice or not.” Shikamaru barely had time to wonder what Sasuke was referring to before Sasuke’s hand flicked forward launching three kunai at chest level. Shikamaru dropped low and rolled backwards as Sasuke started advancing on him. A leg kicked out towards Shikamaru’s head, and he jumped to the side.

“We were supposed to train ninjutsu, not taijutsu,” Shikamaru scolded while catching Sasuke’s right fist before it could land on his face. Instead of answering, Sasuke turned into a rock. Damn it. Replacement jutsu. As Shikamaru moved to a safer area, he pulled out a few kunai. He should’ve known that Sasuke wouldn’t stay so cooperative.

A crinkling of leaves caused Shikamaru to look in the direction of the sound. Few leaves were visible in that direction, but a tree blocked some of his view. Of course, Sasuke knew better than to make sound that could lead an enemy to him, so he had probably made the noise to try and catch Shikamaru into a trap. Shikamaru crept towards the tree silently. He paused when he saw ninja wire drawn taut near the ground. Once he noticed the wire, a kunai with an explosive note hurtled towards him from above. Shikamaru started to jump backwards when some kunai with notes struck the ground behind him with perfect precision. He dodged left instead and then froze when he found his legs stuck to the ground. Looking down, he found packed tight dirt covering the bottom half of his legs and connecting him to the ground.

Sasuke immediately rushed towards Shikamaru and feinted a right hook before landing a blow to the stomach with his left foot. As Shikamaru reacted to the blow, Sasuke moved behind him pulling both of Shikamaru’s arms back and kneeing him in the middle of the back. Shikamaru bent backwards, and Sasuke rolled over him pinning Shikamaru’s arms to the ground with his knees and straddling his chest. Shikamaru attempted to knock Sasuke off of him, but Sasuke’s position held him down even with Shikamaru’s strength advantage. He probably would have been able to escape if his legs weren’t pinned down.

“Genjutsu?” Shikamaru mused casually as if he hadn’t just gotten pinned down by his attacker. Sasuke’s eyes widened at his nonchalance.

“Your legs? Yeah, but since I’ve got your arms pinned, it might as well be real.”

“So what are you hoping to accomplish from this? You can’t kill me without killing yourself. Unless, you’re not really Sasuke.” Shikamaru felt pretty sure that this was Sasuke, but there was a reasonable chance that someone else had just pretended to be.

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. But the identity that’s in question here is yours. I’m going to ask you a question that only Shikamaru should know. We’ve had few conversations just between the two of us. Do you remember a conversation we had a couple days after my team got back from a mission in Wave?” Shikamaru narrowed his eyes and nodded. “Good. What question did you ask that angered me?”

Shikamaru remembered the subject that had started the conversation. Team 7 had just found out that their sensei had a Sharingan. “I asked you if you had ever considered the possibility that one of your clan members impregnated someone from outside the village. You answered that none of the Uchiha would ever be so careless about the possibility of letting the Sharingan fall into enemy hands.”

“I suppose you really are Shikamaru.” Despite his admittance, Sasuke didn’t let up his hold.

“Great. Can you let me go now? I doubt your genjutsu can hold much longer.”

“I still don’t trust that you had nothing to do with this.” Sasuke’s words came out as a threat while he locked an intimidating gaze onto Shikamaru.

Shikamaru stared back impassively. “Fine.”

Sasuke loosened his hold and leapt back a few feet. The genjutsu dispelled, and Shikamaru sat up rubbing his arms. “Can we start what we came here for, or do you plan on attacking me again?”

“Perhaps, but not right now. I still have to find out if you’re responsible for this.”

“Why would I want to do this?” Shikamaru wished he could skip the part where he has the convince Sasuke of his innocence. All the accusations and explanations about him wasted time that could be spent finding the real culprit. It’d almost be time for my date with Temari, Shikamaru thought wistfully.

Sasuke stared Shikamaru down intently. “To get my Sharingan.”

Shikamaru gaped incredulously at Sasuke. “You think someone would travel back in time and switch bodies with younger you all to get your Sharingan.”

“People have done a lot of stupid and weird things to try and get the Sharingan. One man bit my neck to offer me power all so that one day he could take over my body and possess my Sharingan. That’s not much more insane than this.” Sasuke’s expression didn’t change from the empty one he usually had, so it took Shikamaru a while to realize he’d made a sort of joke.

“Right. Well, I can assure you that I’m not trying to get your Sharingan. I don’t have a way to prove that I didn’t do this, so you’re just going to have to trust me.” At Sasuke’s unimpressed face, Shikamaru sighed. “Or at least trust me enough to help me figure out what is going on. You can keep watch on me more easily if we’re working together.”

Sasuke’s face remained unreadable until he gave a sharp nod. “Fine, but if I find out you did this, I’m going to kill you as a warm up for Orochimaru. And I’m not helping you use my chakra.” Much to Shikamaru’s displeasure, Sasuke raced off before he could give advice on how to better act like Ino. Ino’s parents would have him examined before the sun went down.


	2. 2

Having spent the previous night getting his control of Sasuke’s chakra to a basic academy level, Shikamaru woke in the morning feeling as if he hadn’t slept. Cursing to himself, he grabbed one of Sasuke’s shirts with the ostentatious Uchiha fan and quickly dressed for school. Hopefully, he could get Sasuke’s help in approaching his counterpart after school ended. It didn’t seem particularly likely that his younger self would just be his younger self. If this crazy situation had any rules, anyways.

Shikamaru was unsurprised but irritated at Ino’s absence from school. Sasuke had probably decided to take matters into his own hands again and done something stupid and conspicuous. Shikamaru wondered what it would take for Sasuke to prompt an investigation into Ino’s behavior. Probably no more than three days of Sasuke’s arrogance and recklessness. Pretending to listen to Iruka’s lecture, Shikamaru pondered his potential response if Sasuke got caught and implicated Shikamaru. Maybe it’d be best to confess everything and get help from more people to figure out what the hell happened. Except, Shikamaru didn’t know who to trust. Everyone from the Hokage to his father to the civilian lady that sold bread to his mother could be the perpetrator.

Shikamaru stood up in the middle of class drawing the attention of everyone in the room. “Sasuke! Where are you going?” Iruka shouted as Shikamaru fled the room.

At discovering that Ino’s mom had no idea where she was, Shikamaru went back into the apartment he had woken up in the last three days. To his relief, Shikamaru found Sasuke exiting the place as he arrived. Upon spotting Shikamaru, Sasuke scowled and ran off in the opposite direction. Shikamaru followed after him and caught up easily. Sasuke was faster than Ino after all.

“I thought we agreed to work together,” Shikamaru whispered as Sasuke slowed down to a walk.

“We will. On some things. I’m not telling you everything,” Sasuke said derisively.

“And I’m not letting you do something stupid like getting yourself interrogated when Ino’s parents want to find out what’s wrong with their daughter.”

“I’m not going to get interrogated. Kids skip school sometimes.”

“Ino never did, but that’s not what I meant anyways. You confronted me in anger yesterday even though everyone knows that Ino is obsessed with you at this age-” Sasuke snorted at that. “-and I’m definitely not convince you can pull off acting like Ino. Especially since you don’t even know what Ino’s like.”

“I know enough about what she’s like,” Sasuke said dismissively. “I’ll just pretend I’ve reached my rebellious years. I hear that’s a thing.”

“Rebellious years?” Shikamaru asked incredulously. “I didn’t realize rebellion involved dismissing everyone around you and acting like you don’t care about anyone. Ino has a great relationship with her parents. They’re going to get suspicious if she stops returning their affection.”

Sasuke made a face. “I know how to act, Nara. Ino’s parents will notice that she’s slowly growing more distant from her parents. It happens.”

“Not so suddenly,” Shikamaru pointed out doubting Sasuke’s acting abilities. He wasn’t exactly the disguise and infiltrate kind of ninja. That hadn’t been Team 7’s role. They were the muscles, the fighters. While Team 10’s skills involved subtleties best used in quick fights where they took their opponents by surprise or outside of fights altogether, Team 7 better handled those missions where head on fighting was guaranteed. They probably wore their headbands in view on every mission they took.

Before Shikamaru could vocalize his doubts out loud, Sasuke spun around in front of him drawing him to a stop. Sasuke latched onto Shikamaru’s and gave him a smile that he had to admit was reminiscent of Ino’s flirtatious smile. “Sasuke, did you know I have the top overall grades in the class? The two top students should stick together, don’t you think?” Sasuke flipped Ino’s hair over her shoulder and batted Ino’s eyelashes at Shikamaru.

“Ok. That’s creepy,” Shikamaru said extracting his arm. Sasuke snorted and recomposed Ino’s expression into a blank slate.

“I know. I didn’t enjoy it either.” Shikamaru wasn’t sure if Sasuke was talking about his imitation just then or about Ino’s flirtations in the past. He supposed it didn’t really matter either way. He felt a little relieved in addition to being creeped out. His previous assessment of Sasuke’s personality led him to believed he had too much pride to act in some of the sillier ways that an eleven year old Ino used to. Apparently, he was wrong.

“They’ll still be things you don’t know that Ino should know.”

“Like what?”

“Like the names of flowers and their meanings. She runs her family’s flower shop sometimes. And her previous experiences. You don’t have her memories.”

“No, I don’t. I’ll just avoid anything I should know. You can teach me the basics. You seem to know her well enough.”

Shikamaru rubbed his forehead in exasperation. “That’s why I’m trying to tell you we need to work together and you can’t go running off doing whatever you feel like doing. If we’re going to avoid detection, you need to act like Ino and I need to act like you.”

Sasuke stared at the ground thoughtfully for a bit and then lifted his face to look Shikamaru in the eyes. “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll teach you my fighting style. You’re on your own with my chakra. In return, tell me what I need to know about Ino. Or we could just approach Ino now and she can tell me herself.”

“After the academy gets out,” Shikamaru said. “I’m not about to make more of a scene by bursting in the classroom and dragging my younger self out.”

As the two trained together, Sasuke was as amiable as Shikamaru had ever seen him which meant Sasuke actually talked to him albeit snidely and only as much as needed. Sasuke made for a horrible teacher as did most people for whom things came easily to. They had trouble teaching someone how to do something right when they didn’t understand how anyone could do it wrong. “It’s not that hard. Just use your chakra at the right moment to speed up your attack so you can change the direction of your attack without the other person noticing,” Sasuke lectured impatiently.

“Yes. Thank you,” Shikamaru said rolling his eyes. He dropped the stance Sasuke had taught him. “The academy should get out soon. Let’s follow… myself and corner him when he’s alone.”

“That’s your plan?” Sasuke scoffed. “What happened to avoiding detection? I could have approached Ino myself if that was all you were going to do.”

“Except we’re going to ask her questions subtly to find out if it is in fact her,” Shikamaru explained with what he hoped was more patience than Sasuke had afforded him while teaching him taijutsu. “Not storm up to her yelling ‘What the fuck did you do?’ where all our classmates could hear.”

Sasuke stared back unbothered by the criticism. “I didn’t yell.”

“Either way, we’re not doing that.” Shikamaru started heading in the direction of the academy. “Let’s go.”

Shikamaru watched as his eleven year old self walked with Choji, hands behind his head in perfect imitation of one of Shikamaru’s common postures. The Akimichi compound came up first and then Shikamaru’s counterpart would be on his own. The imposter waved lazily to Choji as they separated and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he continued walking. “Now?” Sasuke asked.

“Just a few more seconds.” Shikamaru waited a beat more to make sure the coast was clear and then signaled to Sasuke. They flanked the imposter casually walking beside him as they did so. For his the part, the imposter glanced boredly between the two before sighing.

“Don’t tell me Sasuke’s involved in this too,” he pleaded.

“Like you aren’t the one responsible,” Sasuke hissed. “The only reason I’m not killing you now is because I’m giving you the chance to fix this.”

To his credit, the imposter didn’t even blink at that. “At least wait till we’re somewhere more private before we talk about this,” he said exasperatedly. Sasuke grunted in probable agreement. Finally, some sense, Shikamaru thought. He felt the urge to hug his imposter- himself?- just for being anyone other than Sasuke.

“We can go to m- Sasuke’s apartment,” Sasuke said bitterly. The imposter nodded in agreement.

Immediately upon entering the apartment, the imposter raised his hands in innocence. “Before either of you ask, I did not do this and I don’t know who did.”

“Yeah right,” Sasuke growled. “Your clan is known for its mind transfers.”

“I’m not Ino. I’m Neji.”

“Fuck,” Sasuke cursed. Shikamaru had to agree with Sasuke on that point.

“How many people are running around in the wrong body?” Shikamaru asked not expecting an answer. He could feel a massive headache coming on.

“Hopefully, just us four. I already sought myself out, and Ino is in my body. Everyone’s bodies are answered for,” Neji said. That was actually extremely relieving. Shikamaru didn’t think he could handle continuously chasing down people trying to figure out who was who.

“I’m going to find her,” Sasuke announced.

“Not so fast,” Shikamaru said. “Think a bit. Do you really think Ino has the power to do this? The Yamanaka clan does short term mind transfers between two people that are in close proximity and that exist at the same time. This goes so far beyond anything a Yamanaka might do that it’s hardly even related.”

In quite the unSasuke-like way, Sasuke threw up his arms in exasperation accidentally managing to successfully look like Ino. “Then who? Who else does anything even similar?”

Shikamaru had no answer to that. Now that he’d followed the body trail to end up with all bodies accounted for, he was back to having no leads. Neither Ino nor Neji were capable of something like this and even if Sasuke was, he really didn’t have any reason to do this. As far as Shikamaru knew, the only thing Sasuke ever wanted was to kill Itachi. He failed to see how this fiasco contributed to that.

Shikamaru set his sights on Neji. He needed to check his identity. Was there anything he would know about Neji that no one else did? “When we were on that mission in Mist with Ashane, what was the name of the civilian woman we saved?”

“Miu Kasaoka,” Neji answered simply. Shikamaru wasn’t sure if he was happy that it really was Neji. By all rights, he should be, but at least he’d have a lead if it were someone else.

Sasuke stared contemplatively between Neji and Shikamaru. He narrowed his eyes. “I see,” he said. Shikamaru raised his brows in question. “This is another ploy to get me back to the village. You three made it so I’d stick around to be near my body. I’m still going to leave once I get my body back.”

Shikamaru wondered if Ino would mind too much if he killed her body. “The three of us don’t care nearly enough about you to do something this desperate,” Shikamaru said bluntly. “Frankly, we don’t care whether you live or die, and it’d be much simpler to kill you than to do whatever this is.”

“You’d still do it if it meant following orders,” Sasuke said.

“If it was a mission, Naruto and Sakura would have demanded to be involved,” Neji argued. “They’re the ones that give a damn if you come back or not.”

If Sasuke cared at all that Shikamaru and Neji didn’t care for him, he didn’t show it maintaining a blank face. “I don’t have any reason to believe you. It’s the only thing that makes the slightest amount of sense.”

“Alright. What are you going to do about it?” Shikamaru asked tiredly.

“I don’t know. I’m going to figure out how you did it so I can undo it,” Sasuke said.

“Alright. Let me know if you find anything.” Sasuke sent Shikamaru a scathing look before leaving. Shikamaru deed a nap. A long one.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Neji asked reminding Shikamaru of his presence.

“Not in the slightest,” Shikamaru muttered. “Do you know where Ino is?”

“She’s training with my team.”

“Without them suspecting anything?” Shikamaru asked skeptically.

“I taught her some things. We spent a lot of time together yesterday and Ino’s good at pretending to be other people.” Neji smiled slightly. Shikamaru swore Ino and Neji were secretly dating. The two spent a lot of time together since Ino reached chunin rank.

“I need to talk to her,” Shikamaru said.

“We’re supposed to meet up tomorrow. I’d say Sasuke should come too but I guess that’s out of the question.”

Shikamaru nodded in confirmation. “I’m going to the library to look up sealing. Want to come?”

Neji furrowed his brows. “Why sealing?”

Shikamaru thought of all the things he’d seen sealing do particularly sealing great chakra beasts into babies. And, of course, there was that weird monster transformation that came with Orochimaru’s curse seal. Not to mention the creepy Hyuuga slave seal. Five feet away, Neji stood as a reminder of that even if he didn’t look so much like a Hyuuga at the moment. Either way, Shikamaru knew seal masters were capable of extraordinary feats. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all Shikamaru had. “Because I have to start somewhere,” he answered.

As expected, Ino had no more of an idea of how the four had travelled to the past in each others bodies than any of the other three did. “Are you sure it’s not Sasuke’s doing?” Ino asked in between heavy breaths. Neji just finished giving her a practical lesson on the gentle fist.

“How does this help him kill Itachi?” Neji asked frowning slightly. Shikamaru tore his gaze away from Neji. It was way too disturbing to look at his own eleven year old face controlled by someone else.

“I don’t know, but the Mangekyou thing messes with time, right? That thing Itachi does,” Ino said flourishing her point by waving her hands about. Shikamaru chose to stare at the sky. It might not be as disturbing as looking at Neji controlling his body, but watching Neji’s image use Ino’s gestures and facial expressions caused shivers to crawl up Shikamaru’s spine. Ino’s characteristics just didn’t match Neji’s typical demeanor.

“The Tsukyomi manipulates the perception of time in the victim’s mind. It doesn’t involve actual time travel or anything related to mind swapping.” Shikamaru kept his gaze sternly on the clouds. He could just imagine Ino scrunching up her face and tapping her lips something Shikamaru didn’t think he could handle seeing on Neji’s face in his current state of mind.

“You were looking at seals yesterday, right? Maybe Sasuke learned some sealing from Orochimaru,” Ino suggested. Despite Shikamaru’s determination to avoid looking at Ino-as-Neji, his eyes flitted to her in shock.

“Do you have some reason to believe Sasuke’s responsible for this?”

Ino slumped her shoulders and shook her head. She was too expressive for Neji. That was the problem. “Not at all, but he’s more likely than any of us three.”

“But still not likely at all. There needs to be a motive. It’s probably someone completely different, someone more powerful,” Neji concluded. Shikamaru closed his eyes and leaned backwards till he lay down. They were doing the same thing Shikamaru had been doing since he woke up in a completely different time and different body. It was like he had one piece to the puzzle and trying to solve it from that one piece. He rotated and flipped it into every possible position in the hope that one of those positions provided some insight into what the other pieces were and how they fit together with the one piece he had. Never before had Shikamaru felt that his inquiry and pursuit for answers was so futile, but no matter how he twisted that puzzle piece, it didn’t make up for the lack of every other puzzle piece.

“We need to figure out how to undo this. Our speculation of who may have done this and why is getting us nowhere. It’s the how that’s the most important and has the best chance of getting us out of this situation. And if we figure out how that leads us one step closer to the who and the why,” Shikamaru said keeping his eyes closed. Maybe he should try sleeping again. Eventually, he’d sleep through this whole disaster, right?

“You don’t know how strange it is to see Sasuke with your thinking expression,” Ino said in a tight voice. Shikamaru snorted. It couldn’t come close to as strange as Ino’s mannerisms on Neji.


	3. Chapter 3

Ino and Neji committed fully to researching sealing, making Shikamaru fell as if his time would be better spent delving into a new area of research. The problem was that he didn’t know where else to start. It crossed his mind to go off what Ino suggested about the Mangekyou sharingan, but information on the Uchiha’s kekkei genkai proved to be scarce. He really needed Sasuke’s help on that front, but the Uchiha remained uncooperative. Sasuke maintained that the other three had something to do with his predicament and, as such, refused to associate with them more than he had to. What he was doing on his own to find a solution, Shikamaru didn’t know. He could only hope it didn’t involve putting the four of them through hours of interrogation in T & I.

Shikamaru stuck with studying sealing for the time being. There was a whole wealth of knowledge to be discovered in terms of sealing and it’d be remiss of him to neglect that information without a suitable alternative. “You guys finding anything interesting?” Shikamaru asked Neji and Ino.

“Interesting? Definitely. Relevant? Probably not.” Ino flipped another page in the book she was reading with gusto. In private, Ino seamlessly reverted back to her usual self, but she had the uncanny ability to perfectly mimic Neji in every way -stature, vocabulary, inflection, attitude, etc.- as soon as she entered the public eye. That demonstrated Ino’s greatest skills. She could read any person, log the minute details of their behavior, and mimic them so well their own mother wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Ino and the original.

“My findings are similarly irrelevant,” Neji said frowning slightly at his book. “Trapping the soul of a tailed beast is sort of like transferring minds. Maybe we should study demon seals and figure out how they work.”

“Yeah. Sure. All we need to do is drag Naruto in here, get him to show the seal he doesn’t know he has, and then make sure he doesn’t tell anyone,” Shikamaru said scornfully.

“Don’t be so testy, Shikamaru,” Ino scolded. “We’re just as lost and frustrated as you are, and Neji was just giving a suggestion. One that needs some refinement, but it’s a good start.”

Shikamaru nodded feeling a bit ashamed. He was letting his frustration get the best of him. “Sorry, Neji,” he apologized sincerely.

“Apology accepted,” Neji said with a shrug suited for the body he wore. He didn’t seem to have taken any offense to Shikamaru’s derisive words.

“Have my parents suspected anything?” Shikamaru asked.

“They noticed that you’re away from home more often. That’s it.” Shikamaru wondered if he should be offended that his parents hadn’t noticed someone else occupied his body. It worked in his benefit so he’d forgive it.

Ino raised her arms over her head and stretched. “We should train again. We’ve been researching all day, and I need to get better with the byakugan.” Ino turned her gaze to Shikamaru. “And you need to work more with your chakra.”

“It’s such a drag,” Shikamaru whined resting his head on his folded arms. Even Neji managed Shikamaru’s chakra with relative ease. Only Shikamaru struggled to control his new chakra system enough for basic jutsus. Ino told him that it was due to the vast difference between his and Sasuke’s chakra and claimed she would’ve had just as much trouble with Neji’s if she hadn’t had so much practice with other chakras. Despite her platitudes, Shikamaru found it annoying.

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you master it,” Ino said patting his head sympathetically. Shikamaru jerked his head away and Ino laughed heartily.

Shikamaru caught Neji’s eye and gestured at his counterpart. “Does that not bother you?”

Neji slowly looked at Ino and then back. “What?”

“Never mind.” Shikamaru groaned putting his head back onto his arms. Apparently he was the only one bothered by the abomination of a cheery Neji.

Unsurprisingly, Ino made a much better teacher than Sasuke. “Sasuke has an affinity for lightning which is pretty much the opposite to your earth affinity,” Ino started after she trained with Neji. “Lightning nature chakra moves sharply and can’t be pushed as easily as earth chakra can. You move earth chakra where you want it. You direct lightning where you want it.”

“How do I direct it rather than move it?”

“I’m getting there,” Ino huffed. “Chakra likes to keep a constant ratio throughout your body providing the largest concentration to what is essentially your central nervous system. When you build up chakra, it naturally flows to restore the proper ratio. Don’t look at me like that, Shikamaru! I know you already know this, but this is where I have to start!” Ino only had two flaws as a teacher. She tended to dumb down her explanations to much in an effort to be thorough, and she snapped at Shikamaru if he ever showed displeasure with said dumbing down.

“Ok. Carry on.” Shikamaru relented because it was easier than telling her to get to the point thus angering her.

“Right. As I was saying-” Here Ino paused to glare at Shikamaru as if it were his fault that she chose to interrupt herself over a disgruntled facial expression. “If you mess up the ratio, chakra flows to the lacking areas to make up for it. When you want to send chakra to a specific part of your body, like your feet for tree walking, you’re temporarily messing up that ratio. With earth chakra, it’s simple. You just put in the extra effort to push your chakra against its natural flow to where you want it. With lightning, you kind of have to entice it to do what you want.”

Now that sounded like a drag. His own chakra was going to force him to give it incentives? Pass. He wanted his earth chakra back. “How?” Shikamaru wished he kept his mouth shut when Ino narrowed her eyes at him.

“I’m getting there,” she hissed. “It’s quite simple really, you just-”

“Trick my chakra into thinking I need more chakra towards my feet,” Shikamaru said in revelation. He’d already been doing that while tree walking without thinking about it in terms of lightning versus earth. When he had his own body, Shikamaru pushed all the chakra he need down to his feet all at once. As Sasuke he had to hold a little bit of chakra under his foot and keep waiting til more was drawn downwards. It was a little slower but not much. Sasuke’s chakra travelled quickly.

“That still doesn’t explain why I’m having trouble doing basic jutsu.”

“That’s because you’re not accounting for the increased speed of lightning chakra.”

“So as I’m expelling chakra, more chakra is racing over to replace the expelled chakra and ends up getting expelled too. I suppose I can fix that by learning to complete the jutsu sooner, or learning the right amount to start with so I end up expelling the amount I want.”

“Well… yes,” Ino said looking put out. “Damn it, Shika. This is why I don’t like teaching you. You always figure it out before I’m done explaining.” Shikamaru shrugged unapologetically. “Whatever. I’ll watch you with the byakugan and help you get to the target amount of chakra. And maybe Neji-” Ino trailed off as she looked at Neji sleeping peacefully under a tree. “Well, never mind that,” she finished.

“Isn’t he taking on my role a little too seriously?” Shikamaru asked staring jealously at his sleeping form. If he had to go back in time, it could at least be as himself.

“Oh, hush. Neji never got to relax as himself. He has too much expectation and pressure put on him,” Ino said softly gazing at Neji with a sort of sad fondness. Suddenly, she twisted her face into a scowl. “Not to mention dealing with the green clad fashion disasters known as Gai and Lee. I wish my new persona involved lazing around all day instead of putting up with those two.”

“Yet you always got on my case for ‘lazing around’ as you put it,” Shikamaru said drily. Ino rounded on him pointing a finger at his face.

“That’s because you do it all the time even when you have other things you should be doing.” Shikamaru just smirked at her, and Ino rolled her eyes. Somehow it was getting less unsettling to see Neji act like Ino. “Whatever. Let’s get started on your chakra.”

It took a few days, but Shikamaru figured out how to manage Sasuke’s chakra enough to consistently perform jutsu. As for Sasuke himself, it took a few more days after Shikamaru’s success for him to approach Shikamaru without warning and, once again, in the middle of the classroom. Sasuke just slunk down in the seat next to Shikamaru with a muttered, “We need to talk.”

Resting his clasped hands in front of his face, Shikamaru whispered back, “Do you still suspect us?”

Before Sasuke could answer, Sakura interrupted by darting over to stand in front of Ino. “Ino, you can’t just sit next to Sasuke!” she shrieked angrily. Oh, jeez. Shikamaru thought glancing over to the door in the hopes that summoned Iruka to the room.

“Actually,” Sasuke started as he threw an arm around Shikamaru’s shoulder with a smug smile that did indeed seem natural on Ino’s face. “We’re dating now, so I can.”

“What?” Sakura shouted as Shikamaru froze completely. What? This wasn’t happening. Sakura turned slowly to Shikamaru with trepidation and sadness in her eyes.

“Sasuke… Is that true?”

Shikamaru stayed frozen and didn’t answer afraid he might start laughing from hysteria if he tried. Sakura turned her eyes downwards. “I see.”

Sasuke watched Sakura trudge off with a satisfied smirk. “If only I could have done that years ago.” He removed his arm from Shikamaru’s shoulder. “We’ll talk after class,” he added as Iruka entered the room.

Shikamaru could only nod stiffly. What if he’d just gone insane? So insane he imagined he switched bodies with a younger Sasuke, and in his insane imagination, Sasuke pretended to have a crush on himself to get Sakura to go away. Surely, this couldn’t be a part of reality.

Shikamaru and Sasuke went to Sasuke’s apartment -now Shikamaru’s apartment- after class. As soon as they were alone, Sasuke took out a few scrolls and tossed them to Shikamaru. “What’s this?” Shikamaru asked opening one of the scrolls.

“Some incomplete research from some dead guy about permanently transferring a mind into an inanimate object. He ran into a dead end in his calculations, but I figured you might be able to get something out of it.”

Shikamaru skimmed through the scroll quickly. Very interesting, indeed. Most of it seemed to contain speculation on whether a mind could sustain consciousness without a brain to latch itself onto, but a good portion explored the possibility of making a transfer permanent. “Thanks. This is amazing,” Shikamaru said already looking forward to going through the scroll in greater detail. For once, he didn’t feel anything negative towards Sasuke.

As he tore his gaze from his scroll to look at Sasuke, a niggling suspicion entered his mind. “You stole these from the top level of the Yamanaka clan archives, didn’t you?”

“They should have had better security,” Sasuke said as answer.

Shikamaru levelled his gaze at Sasuke. “And if you get caught?”

“If I did, I’d get off easy. Ino’s the clan head’s daughter,” he said as if Shikamaru didn’t already know that. “Besides, I’m returning them as soon as we copy them down, so we should start right away. Maybe they won’t ever notice the scrolls were missing. If I had my sharingan, I would’ve just memorized the scrolls without needing to steal them.”

Shikamaru knew better than to suggest Sasuke teach him how to use the sharingan. Sasuke would try to take his head off if he asked. “Why’d you bring these scrolls to me? Didn’t you decide I was one of the ones responsible for this?” It made more sense to Shikamaru that these Yamanaka scrolls would increase Sasuke’s suspicion of him rather than dissipate that suspicion. Ino was a Yamanaka after all.

“It seemed too stupid even for leaf ninja to do all this to get a missing nin back. And Naruto would have to have something to do with it,” Sasuke said firmly as if he’d been reiterating those points to himself in his mind.

“But this is a Yamanaka scroll,” Shikamaru said tapping the scroll he held. “They are still leaf ninja.”

“I know, but this technique still requires close proximity, and it has nothing to do with time travel. I don’t think it brought us here. I just hope it can get my body back.”

“You should have brought these to Ino. This is her specialty after all.” Sasuke frowned, pulled out a blank scroll and pen from his pocket, and snatched one of the scrolls in Shikamaru’s hands.

“I’ll get started on this one.”

Shikamaru sighed and pulled out a blank scroll and pen of his own. Apparently, he was copying scrolls with Sasuke for the rest of the day. He couldn’t imagine a more tedious activity with a more frustrating person for company.

Shikamaru managed to convince Sasuke to show the scrolls to Ino and Neji. Ino glanced over the first scroll with a sardonic smile. “This is definitely the work of my great-great uncle, Akio. Dad says he became obsessed with Suna puppets and dedicated his life to trying to become one. He became a bit of an outcast in the clan.”

“If he dedicated his life to it, there must be more than these five scrolls,” Shikamaru concluded.

Ino shrugged. “Dad said he destroyed a lot of his work near the end of his life. He was a bit insane by then.”

“Pity,” Neji said as he perused on of the scrolls. “I bet there was a lot of valuable information in his research.”

“Maybe. Granddad said he saw Akio’s research from his later years, and it was just a bunch of nonsense. He died fairly young too, so he only could have written quality papers for a short period of time.”

Sasuke, who had stayed silent since agreeing to show the scrolls to the other two, leaned forward towards Ino. “Is there anywhere else in the Yamanaka compound that carries secret scrolls?”

Ino grimaced. “I really don’t like you poking around the Yamanaka classifieds.” She shook her head morosely. “I guess it can’t be helped, but no. All our important scrolls are in the archives.”

Sasuke nodded once. “I’ll look in the top level again.”

“Sure. And maybe you can tell us a bit about the Mangekyou,” Ino said sweetly.

“That’s a clan secret,” Sasuke answered flatly.

“So are these,” Ino said whacking one of the scrolls on the table. Shikamaru watched in dismay as the scroll tumbled to the floor.

“Those scrolls can help us,” Sasuke argued.

“And how do I know that there’s not something about the Mangekyou that can help us?”

“Tch,” was all Sasuke had to say to that. Ino stood up slamming her hands on her desk.

“Listen here, you inconsiderate punk, whether you like it or not, we’re all in the same situation, and we need to work together. If I had a choice, I’d have nothing to do with you either, but I’m mature enough to do what’s necessary to fix things, and I certainly don’t want to give out my clan secrets.”

Sasuke stood up slowly and leaned closer to Ino. In a low, threatening voice, he said, “My clan secrets have nothing to do with this unlike your clan secrets. Back off now.”

Neji, who hadn’t pulled his focus away from the scroll he held when Ino and Sasuke first started arguing, narrowed his eyes at Sasuke as he told Ino to back off. For her part, Ino smirked at Sasuke in response to his words. “You know, you should really get more familiar with my fighting style if you’re going to pretend to be me.”

“I think I can handle sloppy academy style taijutsu,” Sasuke drawled. Ino’s smirk slid off her face immediately.

“I’ll show you ‘sloppy academy style taijutsu’. Training ground fifteen. Let’s go.”

Sasuke snorted. “If you want to embarrass yourself.”

Ino narrowed her eyes. “Let’s go,” she repeated and pushed herself away from the table.

“Ino, I don’t think you shoul-” Shikamaru cut off as Ino turned to him with a vicious visage. “Um, never mind.”

“Good,” she bit out. “Coming, Sasuke?” Instead of answering, Sasuke glided past her to leave, and Ino followed right behind him. Neji and Shikamaru exchanged brief looks before rushing after them.

“Should we put a stop to this?” Neji murmured as they drew closer to the training ground.

Shikamaru shook his head. “Ino would kill us. It’s best to let her have her therapy.” Shikamaru knew why Ino wanted to fight Sasuke so badly besides her current anger as his attitude. She was still embarrassed that she used to have an infatuation with the traitor and wanted to show both Sasuke and herself that that was no longer who she was. “If it gets too serious, we’ll interfere.”

“Ok,” Neji conceded uncertainly.

At the training grounds, Ino and Sasuke stood at the center facing each other. “Rules?” Sasuke asked boredly.

“Usual spar rules.” Sasuke nodded in agreement.

“Ok. Let’s start when this kunai hits the ground.” Sasuke threw a kunai up into the air. Four pairs of eyes followed the kunai as it reached its peak height and arced downwards. Once the top of the kunai touched the ground, Ino darted forward slashing towards Sasuke’s right arm. Dropping down to avoid the hit, Sasuke swept his leg out towards Ino. She jumped away pulling out three kunai to fling at Sasuke who countered them with a kunai of his own. Sasuke shot back some kunai to which Ino blocked with a hastily made wall of earth. As the kunai flew, Sasuke quickly replaced himself with one of the kunai, leapt over the wall, and landed a blow on Ino’s face. She swiped back at Sasuke, but he dodged kicking out at her stomach. Ino just barely avoided the kick. Sasuke continued his assault feigning a punch to the face, but switching to punching Ino’s stomach at the last second.

Forcing some distance between herself and Sasuke, Ino turned on the byakugan. Sasuke widened his eyes at that. “The Hyuuga teach you that?”

“Working together,” Ino explained shortly.

As she spoke the last word, she rushed at Sasuke. The two exchanged a flurry of hits and parries, neither landing anything solid until a hit in the side sent Ino flying backwards. In the air, she formed the seal for a jutsu and small drops of fire shot towards Sasuke. He dodged to the left, away from Ino. Ino replaced herself with the kunai that started the match putting herself just behind Sasuke. This time, her strike landed on Sasuke’s shoulder. He gasped either in surprise or pain and then rolled away. Ino followed after him going for his other arm. Once again, she hit her mark but it was obvious that Sasuke let her. Realizing this, Ino tried to pull back, but it was too late. Lightning surrounded Sasuke and zapped Ino. She jolted before her muscles stiffened, and she collapsed to the ground. Sasuke dropped his defense breathing heavily.

“What did you do to her?” Neji asked dangerously as he walked to Ino’s side. Shikamaru followed him keeping an eye on Sasuke and readying a shadow possession jutsu just in case.

“It’s chidori current. It just shocked her. She’ll be fine in a couple minutes,” Sasuke said looking warily at Shikamaru for some reason.

“She better be,” Shikamaru warned.

“It’s true. She’ll be fine,” Neji said with relief as he checked over his own body with green hands.

Shikamaru relaxed. He moved towards Sasuke. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” Sasuke said with confusion.

“Good.” Shikamaru lashed out with a shadow paralysis jutsu. He caught Sasuke off guard and walked towards him so that his lips were by Sasuke’s ear. “Don’t do that again.” Shikamaru punctuated his point by slamming his fist into the side of Sasuke’s head and then sending him to sleep with a genjutsu. As Ino’s body collapsed to the ground, Shikamaru turned back to Neji and Ino.

Neji had a small smile on his face as he met Shikamaru’s eyes. “Well done.”

Shikamaru nodded but silently disagreed. In reality, he’d overreacted. Ino instigated the fight, and Sasuke ended it in a reasonably harmless matter. For a ninja spar, ending with one of the participants momentarily unconscious was perfectly acceptable. Only Shikamaru’s fear at seeing his teammate brought down by an unknown jutsu at the hands of an enemy drove his angry response. His fear caused anger, and his anger stayed even as Neji confirmed that Sasuke hadn’t harmed Ino. It was Shikamaru’s distrust of Sasuke that led him to overreact so completely. In retrospect, he should have done something to put a stop to the spar. You just didn’t have a spar with someone you couldn’t trust to follow the rules of inter-village sparring. But maybe it had felt just a little good to punch Sasuke.


	4. Chapter 4

Shikamaru felt a great sense of deja vu as he sat in class listening to Iruka list off the teams for all the new genin only this time the Ino he sat next to was not really Ino. Surprisingly, Sasuke had almost no reaction to Shikamaru’s warning and subsequent punch. When the genjutsu wore out, Sasuke just got up calmly, repeated Shikamaru’s own words back at him -don’t do that again- and then left. The next day, he acted like nothing happened, and he continued to sit next to Shikamaru in class.

All the teams ended up the same as they had been originally. Shikamaru felt a twinge of sadness that he couldn’t be a part of team ten, but he didn’t think he could handle speaking with Asuma again anyways. As Shikamaru waited for his new sensei to show up, he decided to take a nap. No one would grow suspicious just because Sasuke decided to take one nap.

A small clatter woke Shikamaru up from his doze. He blinked sleepily at Kakashi standing in the doorway with an eraser on the ground. “My first impression is… I don’t like you three. Meet me at the top of the school.” He disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Shikamaru groaned. They could have just stayed in the classroom. No one else was there.

Shikamaru trudged up to the top with Naruto and Sakura bickering in front of him. At least, neither were bothering him this time. Sakura had mostly backed off since Sasuke decided to use dating each other as a cover for any strange behavior and their new camaraderie. Naruto just found Sakura more interesting for the moment.

“Ok. Let’s start with introducing yourselves. Your likes, dislikes, dreams for the future,” Kakashi said pleasantly when they got to the top of the school.

Shikamaru held back a laugh. It would be too easy to imitate Sasuke here. “I don’t like anything. I dislike most things, and my dream is to kill a certain man.”

Naruto shrank away from him, Sakura eyed him uncertainly, and Kakashi gave a fake smile behind his mask. “Great. Sakura, you next.”

“Um, ok. I like-” Sakura looked at Shikamaru shyly, blushed, and then continued. “I like trivia, and I dislike idiot blondes. My dreams for the future are… um, to make chunin and specialize in research and development.” Shikamaru raised his eyebrows. He never knew Sakura once had an interest in R & D.

“A reasonable endeavor. And last?” Kakashi gestured to Naruto who launched into a two minute rant about ramen and Hokages.

“Lovely,” Kakashi said when Naruto either ended his introduction or paused for breath. “Now that you’ve gotten to know each other, I’m sad to say that it all might not matter. There’s still one more test before you can officially be called genin.”

“What?!” Naruto and Sakura exclaimed at the same time. Shikamaru settled for raising his brows in pretend surprise. Anything else was just not worth the effort. Shikamaru felt grateful that Sasuke wasn’t overly expressive like his two teammates.

“We passed the genin test. That means we’re genin!” Naruto continued adamantly.

“Not exactly,” Kakashi said pleasantly. “Each jounin instructor gets to give his team a test to weed out the unworthy. Only about… say… 33% pass the tests.”

“Hey! We’re worthy!” Naruto protested.

“Good. The test will be easy for you then. It starts at seven at training ground seven. Don’t eat breakfast or you’ll throw up.” Kakashi disappeared.

I’m sensing a theme of seven, Shikamaru thought derisively. “See you tomorrow,” he said out loud and left.

The next morning, Shikamaru arrived after Naruto and Sakura but before Kakashi. “Hey, Sasuke! I know you’re going to pass,” Sakura said encouragingly.

“Hey, I’m going to pass too, Sakura!” Naruto interjected. Shikamaru decided he didn’t want to be a part of that and slumped against a tree closing his eyes.  
Sometime later, Kakashi made an entrance causing Sakura and Naruto to yell at him for being late. Shikamaru popped open his eyes and frowned at the jounin. He’d tried to needle the nature of the test out of Sasuke who told him that all he needed to do to pass the test was feed Naruto. Somehow, he was sure there was more to it.

“Good morning,” Kakashi said in the midst of accusations of lateness. He pulled out a couple of bells. “Here’s how the test works. You get a bell by noon, you pass. You don’t get a bell, you don’t pass. Come at me with everything you’ve got or you have no chance. Go!”

Shikamaru and Sakura sought cover while Naruto stood his ground in front of Kakashi. Shikamaru ignored their exchange in favor of figuring out what to do. Whether they worked together or not, they didn’t have a chance of getting a bell from someone as skilled as Kakashi if they were all assumed to be genin level ninja. Shikamaru supposed Kakashi was just trying to gauge their skill level and see if they could put aside their differences long enough to get the bells. That meant he had to put some effort into this test.

Shikamaru rushed over to where Sakura hid. “Sasuke!” Sakura gasped a little too loudly. Oh, well. Someone as skilled as Kakashi already knew where they hid anyways.

“Let’s attack while he’s distracted. We’ll have the best chance if we’re all attacking him at once.”

“Ok,” Sakura complied.

He directed Sakura behind Kakashi and started an aerial attack of his own. Confronted with three genin striking from three different directions, Kakashi expertly demonstrated a replacement jutsu.

“You’ll have to be better than that,” Kakashi said casually leaning against a tree reading his orange book.

“Naruto, take the south side. Sakura, take west. I’ll take east.” Luckily, Naruto didn’t argue. The three spread out and charged at Kakashi again. Shikamaru tossed two kunai behind Kakashi. As Kakashi threw back Sakura and Naruto with one arm each, Shikamaru pulled on the chakra strings he’d attached to the kunai drawing them towards Kakashi. With widened eyes, Kakashi jumped over the kunai as they darted passed. Shikamaru kicked out at Kakashi as he landed. Kakashi caught his foot, and Shikamaru tugged on the chakra strings again. As the kunai flew towards his arm, Kakashi released the foot and dashed backwards.

Thanks, Temari, for that trick, Shikamaru thought. With Kakashi now in Naruto’s general area, Naruto produced a barrage of shadow clones and surrounded Kakashi. Distantly, Shikamaru heard Sakura scream. He hesitated. Should he help Naruto or check on Sakura?

“Naruto, send a clone to find Sakura,” Shikamaru ordered as he rushed into the fight.

“On my way!” one of the clones yelled.

Kakashi decimated Naruto’s clones easily even with Shikamaru to distract him. The most annoying part was that Shikamaru had numerous chances to complete a shadow possession if he were allowed to.

“Alright. That’s enough,” Kakashi declared disappearing and reappearing away from them. Sakura stumbled into view. “You three pass.”

“Huh, but what about the bells?” Naruto asked.

“Not necessary. The bells were a temptation to pit yourselves against each other, but you stuck together as a team even making sure to look for Sakura when she got separated. So congratulations. You’re officially team seven. We have our first real training session at the same time, in the same place, tomorrow. Later.”

“Well,” Sakura said after Kakashi disappeared and Naruto celebrated. “Should we go out to dinner to celebrate?”

“Can’t. Sorry. I have plans,” Shikamaru said truthfully. He and the other body swappers met every night they could at his apartment.

“You and I could go to dinner, Sakura! We don’t need that bastard!” Naruto called loud enough for Shikamaru to hear as he headed home. What he really wanted to do was go to bed, but that was not to be the case. The other three showed up shortly with books and scrolls to go through.

“Sasuke,” Ino addressed the Uchiha to the great surprise of the other three people in the room. Ever since the fight, Ino and Sasuke had spent a tremendous amount of effort into pretending the other didn’t exist. Sasuke deigned to raise a brow at Ino in response. “Read over section three of the fourth scroll.”

“The one with the squirrels? I already read that.” Sasuke asked already going back to the sealing book he had in his hands. Ino’s hands twitched, but she remained calm.

“Read it again. Carefully. My dad started teaching me the mind transfer jutsu after I became genin which means he’ll start teaching you soon, and I need to show you something first,” Ino explained. Sasuke ignored her.

“Sasuke, read the damn scroll,” Shikamaru said thrusting the scroll at Sasuke. He didn’t have the patience to put up with this right now. “If Ino has something to teach you about the mind transfer jutsu, you should listen. It’s one of the most dangerous jutsus to perform incorrectly.”

Sasuke reluctantly took the scroll. “Fine.” Across from him, Ino mouthed a quick thanks to Shikamaru. A few minutes later, Sasuke set the scroll down. “Why did I have to read that?” he asked sounding miffed.

Shikamaru thought he knew why Ino had him read that. The section covered an experiment Akio Yamanaka carried out involving squirrels. In his experiment, Akio attempted to permanently transfer the mind of a live squirrel into the body of a recently deceased squirrel. Each attempt resulted in the return of the live squirrel’s mind into it’s own body. By the end of the third transfer, the squirrel no longer had the ability to walk properly and couldn’t be tempted into eating anything. Those were the kinds of dangers involved in improper use of Yamanaka clan jutsus.

“Do you know why the squirrel ended up disabled?”

“Because Akio kept its mind in the body of the dead squirrel too long,” Sasuke answered easily.

“Yes, but do you know why that harmed the squirrel? Specifically?” Sasuke didn’t respond, so Ino continued. “You don’t because you don’t really know how that jutsu works. All you know is that the squirrel’s mind ended up in the body of the other squirrel, but you don’t know how. That’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to learn years before actually attempting the jutsu to scare you off of trying to skip steps in learning the jutsu. If you’re reckless in the learning stages, you could end up like that squirrel.”

“I get it,” Sasuke said looking on the verge of rolling his eyes.

“I don’t think you do. This isn’t like jutsus you’re used to where you’ll probably get a curable physical injury. People that mess with the mind transfer jutsu end up losing a part of themselves and, if it’s really bad, mentally incompetent,” Ino stressed trying to get Sasuke to take her seriously. He shifted the sealing book to the side.

“Ok. What do you think I should know?”

Ino relaxed, relieved that Sasuke had started to listen. “Ok. Let me establish some terms. The user is the person performing the mind transfer jutsu. The target is the... well... the person the user targets obviously. First thing you need to know is what actually happens when the user’s mind takes over the body of the target. A mind transfer sends a part of the user’s mind to the brain of the target along with some of the user’s chakra. The chakra connects the user’s mind to the brain and allows the user to take control of the target. As the chakra fights to keep control away from the target, it slowly starts to dissipate. When you allow the chakra to completely disappear, that’s when you lose a part of yourself. Without chakra, the part of the user’s mind in the target will start to die away. Now, the user will come to in her own body once the control she had elsewhere is lost, but she will have lost a part of herself. She will have lost the part of her mind she sent to the target.

“At first, the differences in the user won’t be that prominent. Maybe she forgets a few things or maybe she has different emotional responses to situations than she used to, but she’ll still mostly be her. One mistake isn’t too dramatic, but it only takes two to damage the user’s mind beyond repair. On the second mistake, she forgets some obvious things. Maybe she forgets she has a brother or maybe she forgets how to walk. She’ll forget important things. Things that disrupt her life. At the same time, her emotional responses to everything dampens. She no longer cares as much when her friends get injured. She no longer feels joy when she sees her parents for the first time in months. She still recognizes that she should feel these things, but she doesn’t. And it gets worse. No one has lasted more than five such mistakes without becoming completely brain dead.

“So don’t think that you can press your limits when you’re learning the jutsu. If my dad says it’s been long enough, then it has. End the jutsu as soon as he says so. If you’re not sure you’ve used the jutsu for too long, you have used the jutsu for too long. And don’t you dare try to figure out how to do a permanent transfer on your own. It won’t end well for you. I think I outlined the reasons why pretty well.” As Ino ended her speech, Shikamaru let out a breath. He knew most of that, on some level, but he never had all the dangers outlined so clearly before. Besides him, he saw Neji staring at Ino with uneasiness. Neji probably never heard anything about the dangers of the mind transfer jutsu before. It was the stuff of nightmares.

“I won’t press my limits,” Sasuke promised. He looked unbothered by Ino’s words, but he gave her his full attention the full time she spoke, so Shikamaru figured Sasuke knew to take this seriously.

“Good. If you ever feel like changing your mind, remember my great-great uncle’s squirrel. That could be you.” For the rest of the day, the four continued their research in a state of agitation.

A little more than a week later, Ino slapped a small, unrolled scroll on the table while the three boys read their respective research material. “Take a look at that,” she crowed triumphantly. The three looked up at their research. Sasuke immediately scoffed and went back to his book.

“It’s a storage seal,” Neji said slowly waiting for the reason he was being shown a plain storage seal to be given to him.

Shikamaru looked a little more closely at the seal and smiled. He recognized the handwriting. “You made your own storage seal.”

“I did,” Ino said proudly. Sasuke flicked his gaze back upwards, his interest piqued by this new revelation.

“When did you learn that?”

“Oh, I’ve been taking lessons from Tenten for a while now, but I recently made my first successful seal on our last mission. Did you know Tenten makes her own seals? Just storage and projection seals but still impressive.” Ino spoke in a rush clearly excited by her success. Neji nodded absently. Of course, he knew his teammate delved into the art of sealing.

Shikamaru grabbed the seal and started examining it. He’d never tried making his own seals, but he knew the theory behind it by now. There was the chakra receptacle, and that was the chakra release. Around the edges were the equations needed to carry out the storage and retrieval of various objects. Closer to the middle, the words displayed the intentions of the seal.

“Hold on,” Shikamaru said as he frowned at one of the equations. He took out his pen and wrote an equation in his own notes. “Here,” he said passing the notes to Ino.

Ino looked down at the equation in befuddlement. “What? I did all the equations correctly. Tenten checked over them, and I already tested the seal. It works.”

“I’m sure it works, but it can work better. You wrote this seal in the Senju style,” Shikamaru said pointing to the awkwardly placed symbols in the middle of the seal.

“According to the books, Senju seals are weaker because they require more concentration. Uzumaki style seals always have a focal point to make concentration easier. You wrote the seal in the style of the Senju, but you did the calculations like you wrote it Uzumaki style. You weren’t imagining a bit of a lag when you retrieved items from this seal. The lag was really there.”

“I- but-” Ino stuttered and then recovered. “Tenten said my calculations were perfect.”

“She was wrong. She’s probably made partially faulty seals her whole life.”

“I don’t know.” Ino looked at Neji for help.

“Tenten changed the way she made her seals a couple years from now. I don’t know what the change was, but her seals worked better afterwards,” Neji told Ino.

“Well,” Ino said with a hollow voice. She snatched her seal up from the table. “This is why I hate you sometimes, Shikamaru. I figure out how to do something before you do, but you still show me up and prove that you know more about it than I do.”

Shikamaru’s lips twitched with amusement. “I just know the theory behind it well. You’re still the only one that knows how to put the theory into practice. Which means you’ll have to teach us.”

Ino perked up at that. “Well, it will be a drag, but I guess someone has to do it.” She heaved a dramatic sigh and then winked at Shikamaru. He laughed. Surprisingly, so did Neji.

Sasuke just shook his head before shutting his book. “How long will it take to learn more complex sealing?”

That dampened the mood. Every book they read cautioned against learning complex sealing without the assistance of a sealing master, and they only knew of one sealing master currently in Konoha. Shikamaru doubted the Hokage, as busy as he was, wanted to spend time teaching a genin to seal.

“The Science of Sealing says that it takes one year to master the basics and two years to start the deconstruction of advanced seals. The book says that once you can comprehend every part of an advanced seal you come across, you can start creating your own. So I guess it will take two to three years…” Ino trailed off at the end as she gazed morosely at the table. Each of the four started to feel discouraged as they considered the apparent probability that by the time they could reverse the time travel, they’d already be that far into the future. That is, if sealing would even allow such a thing. And if it took sealing to get their bodies back, they’d be stuck in the wrong body far longer than they wanted.

“One year to master the basics and two years to start deconstruction under the guidance of a seal master, something we don’t have,” Neji pointed out bleakly.

Shikamaru clenched his fist. He knew that they could just tell the Hokage and ask for his help, but that would take away every freedom he had. If the Hokage knew he had four ninja in his village that knew the future, he would take every advantage of that. The Hokage wouldn’t even want to send them back to their time, not when he could press them for information whenever he needed. Shikamaru liked the Hokage. He cared for the members of his village, ninja and civilians alike, but he was shrewd and prepared to do something a little morally gray if it meant keeping those people safe.

“I’m not staying like this for three years,” Sasuke said firmly. “I can handle living through the past again. It doesn’t particularly matter what year it is, but I’m not staying as Ino.”

“You might not have a choice,” Shikamaru said. He could feel that sinking despair in his stomach. He’d felt it since he first woke up in the past as Sasuke, but he managed to ignore it until now. He had no idea how long this would end up lasting. It could be indefinite. He barely even had a glimmer of hope for returning to the right time. Almost certainly, it would take to long to figure out to even matter.

Sasuke stood up and gathered the Yamanaka scrolls that he insisted on keeping hold of. “I’m done for the night,” he announced before running off. Shikamaru stared at the door as it slammed shut. He felt the same.

“You two should go,” Shikamaru said to Ino and Neji as he stood up. They nodded with blank expressions on their faces. Shikamaru didn’t wait for them to leave before heading to his bed. Correction, Sasuke’s bed.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Shikamaru rolled out of Sasuke’s bed, put on Sasuke’s clothes, and ate some of Sasuke’s food for breakfast. After he finished getting ready, he went to training ground seven to train with Sasuke’s genin team as he used Sasuke’s expressions, verbal tics, and fighting style to keep up appearances. He went back to Sasuke’s apartment feeling fed up with everything Sasuke and wishing he could just pop into his own house and play a game of shogi with his dad while listening to his mom hum off key as she prepared dinner. Then, the three of them would sit down to eat dinner together, and his mom would yell at them for leaving their plates on the table. His dad would laugh and start clearing the table giving his wife a kiss on the cheek as he passed her. Yoshino would chuckle and shake her head before pulling Shikamaru outside with her to stare at the stars. She loved the stars, knowing the names of all the constellations and how to locate them. Shikamaru preferred watching the amorphous clouds knowing the clouds came and went as the wind did, but his mom liked stars, consistent in their placement and shape if not always in their visibility.

Shikamaru pulled out some rice and a packet of instant miso from a cupboard. He really should learn how to cook, but he had other priorities for the time being. He ate the bland meal slowly wondering which constellations would be most visible this time of the year. The Yonbi’s horns gleamed bright in the spring. Maybe he would look for that constellation later.

After eating, Shikamaru set his bowl atop a pile of other bowls in the sink. He should probably do the dishes at some point. He sat back at the kitchen table covered in various notes and books about sealing. As he reached for the book he started reading the day before, he hesitated. Should he even continue on that path if it was pretty much guaranteed to take at least three years to get anywhere? Or should he start looking for another solution?

Shikamaru snatched the book and flipped it open to where he left off. The fact remained that the only two things the group had to go off of were sealing and mind transfer jutsus. It made more sense to continue looking into those two than to start over completely. Of course, he’d continue looking for other possibilities, but sealing needed his attention if he didn’t want to be stuck as Sasuke for the rest of his life. Better to have a three year plan than no plan.

Shikamaru went to his room with the book to escape the pervasive feeling of loneliness he felt in the kitchen, but the silence and loneliness proved ubiquitous. Get a hold of yourself, Shikamaru, he told himself. You’re not a kid.

An hour later, Shikamaru sat back in the kitchen, Ino and Neji joining him. “I guess Sasuke isn’t showing up tonight,” Ino said speculatively. “I wish he’d make up his mind about whether he wants to work with us or not.”

“Forget about Sasuke,” Neji said quietly. “I think it’s time we take a peek at the top security scrolls in the Hokage tower.”

Shikamaru tensed up as Ino nodded. So the two had already talked about this together. “When did you decide this was a good idea?” Shikamaru asked addressing the two of them. “And how could you possibly think that? It’s not like we could just waltz into the most secure section of the building with the highest concentration of Konoha ninja, steal some scrolls, and then walk out. Even if we did manage to find a way to steal the scrolls, they’d track us down in less than ten minutes. Those scrolls have chakra imprints on them that help to locate the scrolls if someone does manage to take them.”

Ino and Neji exchanged looks. “We know,” said Ino. “But we can’t just risk the possibility that there’s something there relevant to our situation. Especially since I think more of my great-great uncle’s scrolls might be in there.”

Shikamaru leaned back in his seat. “What makes you think that? I thought you said he destroyed most of his work.”

“He did, but I think there’s still more of it left. When Granddad told me about the destruction, he said that the research burned in a fire Akio started himself in his home. Granddad said the only surviving scrolls were in a metal chest. It seems weird for Akio to have put just the scrolls we have into that chest.”

“It does,” Shikamaru agreed. The scrolls just didn’t seem to hold enough information by themselves to be worthy of the protection of a locked chest. Shikamaru wanted to ask a few questions, but he settled for the most relevant one. “Why would they put some of those scrolls in the Hokage tower?” Clans usually kept any writings by clan members or connected to clan secrets.

“It’s rare, but we hold our most dangerous secrets there. The Hokage tower has tighter security, and we want to minimize the risk of something destructive falling into the wrong hands. There are seals on Yamanaka scrolls to prevent an outsider from accessing them. When we send scrolls to the tower, it’s to protect those secrets from a rogue Yamanaka,” Ino said with a grimace clearly not liking the idea of a Yamanaka going rogue. Or maybe she was thinking about how Sasuke had already gotten through the Yamanaka’s security.

Shikamaru sighed heavily. “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it, and I didn’t want to try breaking into the top security section of the Hokage tower either. Now, I’m thinking maybe we don’t have a choice,” Ino finished her sentence with a solemn look at the sealing books and papers covering the table.

Shikamaru shook his head. “I don’t think we have the choice of breaking in,” he said. “We’d have to steal what we wanted without detection and manage to rid the scrolls of the chakra imprint. We have pretty much no chance of getting away with it. We’ll be arrested and charged with treason.”

“This is important,” Neji spoke up for the first time since he suggested the theft. “This could be our opportunity to find a way to get our bodies back. We could at least check out the security and see if we can come up with a plan.”

“I don’t know,” Shikamaru said. Just poking around places they shouldn’t be could get them in a lot of trouble.

“Do you really want to let something like this go?” Ino asked. No, he didn’t, but planning a theft this large scale would take way too much time and careful planning.

“You can’t go through life expecting everything to be easy and half-assing everything that isn’t,” Temari told him once in a much less dire situation. “The question isn’t how hard it will be. The question is whether it will help you get closer to your goal, so shut up and do what needs to be done. You and I both know what you can accomplish when you put the effort into it.”

Of course, Shikamaru didn’t need a scolding from Temari to motivate him this time. He had all the motivation he needed every time he saw his reflection.

“Alright. Fine, but we can’t be obvious about poking around the area. We don’t do anything that might possibly be construed as intent to go where we’re not wanted,” said Shikamaru.

“You’re worrying too much,” said Ino. “No one’s going to suspect three genin unless we do something really obvious.”

“They’ll latch onto any clue we’re careless enough to leave,” Shikamaru said undeterred by Ino’s attempt to downplay the danger they faced. “We have to take this extremely slowly. We don’t make any moves unless we know we won’t get caught.”

Ino and Neji nodded in agreement. “And we won’t tell Sasuke about this,” Neji said. Ino and Shikamaru nodded. It wouldn’t do to give a traitor access to secret and dangerous scrolls. Not unless they had to.

Getting information on the security measures protecting the scrolls wasn’t easy. For one thing, Konoha held its higher security secrets in the lower level of the Hokage tower where no genin had a reason to venture to. For another thing, no disguise would be effective. Inuzuka could smell through a disguise, sensors could sense through a disguise, and Ino would need to know how someone with clearance to the lower levels acted to pull off a successful mind transfer. The three settled for glimpses of who went in and out of the guarded area when they were in the tower for accepting and reporting missions.

On the other hand, keeping their new plan from Sasuke turned out to be easy. Sasuke started showing up sporadically to their meetings, but otherwise kept away from them other than Neji who he shared a team with. The other three didn’t yet have much to talk about concerning their planned burglary, so sticking solely to sealing while Sasuke was there wasn’t a setback at all. On one of the many days Sasuke didn’t show, Ino informed the other two that she found her mark.

“Mai Hyuuga,” she said triumphantly. “I’ve seen her go in and out of the lower levels bunches of times. And I can study her more easily than other people since she lives near where I’m living.”

Neji made a displeased noise. “What?” Ino asked.

“I know Mai,” was all Neji said.

“And?” Shikamaru asked. “Is it a bad idea to watch her?”

Neji stayed silent for a while before answering. “Generally, it’s not a good idea to spy on any Hyuuga. We tend to notice when someone is watching us.”

“Being incognito while gathering information is sort of my specialty,” Ino said affronted. “I can handle a Hyuuga. Unless you think Mai is a problem specifically.”

“In terms of this, no,” Neji said a little bitterly. Ino and Shikamaru caught each other’s eyes, Ino with a worried press of her lips and Shikamaru with a frown. Whatever bothered Neji about Mai, he didn’t want to share. Neji continued, “Anyone with the clearance to enter the lower levels is going to be skilled. If you think watching Mai helps you the most, that’s where we’ll start.”

Ino nodded still looking worried. “Ok. Can you tell me everything you know about Mai? To give us a head start?”

Neji spilled out everything he knew about the other Hyuuga with a resentful tone. Mai was a chunin in the branch family of the Hyuuga. She revered the main family and believed firmly in the rule of the strong over the weak as well as the right of the main family to exercise full control over the branch family. Shikamaru supposed that was where Neji’s resentment came from. Mai had a husband and one kid the age of ten. The husband worked as a clerk for the clan’s finances, and the boy went to school at the academy. Neji’s knowledge stopped there.

As he finished speaking, Shikamaru tapped his fingers on his thigh in thought. Only Ino had much opportunity to watch Mai. “Do we know when she goes to the lower levels?” If he could watch from the distance when she leaves, he could take note of where she heads. Maybe there was somewhere outside of the Hyuuga compound and the Hokage tower that she spent a lot of time.

“As far as I can tell, she mostly arrives at night and leaves in the early morning. I’ve seen her come in during midday a couple of times, though,” Ino said.

“The times didn’t depend on the day?”

Ino shook her head. “Not that I noticed. She might arrive at noon one Tuesday and then at night the next one. The days weren’t consistent.”

Shikamaru sighed. That made even more work for him.

As it turned out, Shikamaru’s first glimpse of Mai after that day was not anywhere near the Hokage tower. After training with team seven, Shikamaru joined Sakura and Naruto for dinner a barbecue place. Naruto wanted ramen, but Sakura refused adamantly. Both had been surprised the first time Shikamaru joined them for a meal, but he much preferred going out to trying to cook for himself.

“Hey, Sasuke, I can eat more beef than you,” Naruto challenged.

“Ok,” said Shikamaru. At Shikamaru’s uncaring reply, Naruto folded his arms into a pout. He always tried to pull Shikamaru into weird competitions Shikamaru wanted no part of.

“Naruto, nobody cares how much you can eat,” Sakura said rolling her eyes. Shikamaru tuned out the ensuing argument as Mai Hyuuga stepped through the entrance to the restaurant with a couple of other woman. Mai and her companions sat at the bar.

“Sakura,” Shikamaru said breaking up her and Naruto’s spat. Sakura looked up surprised that he addressed her suddenly.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Why do you want to work in R&D?” If Shikamaru looked at Sakura as she talked, he could see Mai in his peripheral vision without looking like he was watching her.

“Oh! Well,” Sakura started looking a little flustered. At the bar, Mai downed a shot with her two companions and immediately flagged down the bartender for another round. “I’ve always been curious about how chakra works and how it’s used in different jutsus. I feel like when I learn exactly how a jutsu works it’s easier to perform. I want to learn more about how chakra works and use that knowledge to come up with new possible jutsu.”

Sakura spoke enthusiastically before cutting herself off blushing a bit at her excitement. “What do you mean? You just form the correct hand seals to do a jutsu,” Naruto said blinking in confusion at Sakura.

Sakura stared at Naruto incredulously. “Um, no. Not exactly.” Shikamaru settled back into his seat as Sakura explained how to mould chakra in a variety of ways for different effects. Mai threw her head back with a laugh over something one of the other women she was with said. Shikamaru examined the other two women. Both looked like civilians, strange drinking buddies for a kunoichi.

Not long later, Shikamaru realized he was gaining nothing useful from this. He learned Mai could handle a lot of liquor and she had civilian friends. Hardly something to be used in infiltrating the Hokage tower. Maybe Ino could glean something out of the interaction for her impersonation.

“Oh, man. All the food’s gone,” complained Naruto loudly. “Not paying!” he shouted as he ducked under the table and ran for the door.

Sakura stood up quickly shaking her fist at Naruto. “Naruto, get back here!” She ran after Naruto and grabbed him by the collar right before the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Naruto laughed nervously. “Uh, well, you see, I left my wallet at home…”

“Naruto,” Sakura growled.

“Sakura?” One of the women beside Mai asked looking at Sakura with wide eyes. Mai looked over to see who her friend was talking to and turned back to her drink dismissively upon seeing Sakura. Sakura turned to the woman and immediately dropped Naruto crossing her hands behind her back innocently.

“Ah, Amari-san,” Sakura dipped her head into a small bow. Naruto took the opportunity to escape. “How have you been?”

“Good. I haven’t seen you in my shop lately,” the woman, Amari apparently, said.

“Sorry. I’ve been a little busy.”

“I see,” Amari said glancing at the headband on Sakura’s head. She smiled. “Well, stop by once you get the chance. Plums are back in season, so we have plum daifuku again. I know how much you loved those last year. You’re mom kept coming back to buy more.”

Sakura nodded. “Ok. I will.” Shikamaru smiled to himself. Perhaps, he hadn’t learned anything about Mai here, but he did find out Sakura knew one of her friends who seemingly had a bakery. It was a start.

Amari waved goodbye to Sakura, and Sakura walked back over to the table. “Sorry. I let Naruto get away,” Sakura said.

Shikamaru shrugged. “We’ll get him back next time. Let’s pay and go.” The two split the bill for the meal and exited the restaurant.

Before Shikamaru and Sakura split ways, Shikamaru had to ask Sakura about Amari. “You knew that woman in there?”

“Yes. She runs a bakery near my house,” Sakura explained.

“Is she a civilian?”

“Uh, yes,” Sakura looked at Shikamaru questioningly.

“Never mind,” Shikamaru said. “See you tomorrow.” Sakura waved disappointedly as Shikamaru headed away from Sakura.

Shikamaru walked through the door to the apartment he currently stayed at and started as he saw Sasuke waiting casually on the couch. “Do you usually break into other people’s places when they’re not home?” Shikamaru asked after shutting the door.

Sasuke stood up and glared coldly at Shikamaru. “This is my apartment.”

“Why? According to property rights, you gave up ownership to the apartment as soon as you defected from Konoha,” Shikamaru pointed out. Sasuke bristled, but turned and headed to the kitchen table without responding to Shikamaru’s words.

“I had a question to ask about the storage seal,” he said pulling a paper with a rough representation of a storage seal from the middle of the table. Shikamaru stepped over to the opposite side of the table curiously.

“This late at night?” he asked. Instead of answering the question, Sasuke shoved the paper at Shikamaru who glanced at it briefly before lifting his eyes back to Sasuke with suspicion. Sasuke was acting a bit strange.

“What about this?” Shikamaru asked waving the paper Sasuke had handed him. Sasuke calmly sat down and pointed to the symbol for retrieval near the center of the seal. Shikamaru flicked his gaze down to the symbol and immediately back up.

“How do you change this to summon stored kunai with enough speed to shoot it at the enemy?” Sasuke asked.

“Ino’s the one that’s been making those kinds of seals. You should be asking her.” Shikamaru sighed when Sasuke just stared blankly back at him. He didn’t know why Sasuke always went to him first, but he wished Sasuke would just go to Ino when it was clear she was more well versed in the subject.

“Fine,” Shikamaru said grabbing a piece of paper and a pen. He sat down reluctantly. This could take a while, and he’d really rather go to sleep. “As I’m sure you already figured out, you don’t want to use the retrieval symbol in this case.”

Shikamaru started writing out the correct symbol but paused as he noticed something. Sasuke’s hands were hidden under the table though they’d been resting on the table just seconds before. Shikamaru tried to move, but it was too late.

Sometime later, Shikamaru blinked his eyes open from his position on the couch just in time to see Ino slip out the front door. No, not Ino, Sasuke. Shikamaru was still a bit disoriented. He walked unsteadily to the kitchen to get a glass of water. His throat was burning. As he leaned against the counter drinking the water, Shikamaru tried to figure out why Sasuke used a mind transfer jutsu. Was it just to get his body back for a short time, or was there another reason? All Shikamaru knew was that this was yet another problem for him to deal with.


	6. Chapter 6

Shikamaru stared in dismay at the two zinnias that lay in front of his door. With a sigh, he picked up the flowers and went back inside to throw them out. Those flowers meant Ino had just left on a mission that she expected to take at least two weeks. He had been hoping to get some insight from her on Sasuke’s actions, not to mention Ino was the most essential person in the watch on Mai. Without her they had no one to impersonate Mai which meant her watch on Mai was the most valuable. There wasn’t anything to be done about it. They had to play their roles.

Shikamaru didn’t know what to do about Sasuke. Sasuke did whatever he wanted and Shikamaru didn’t know if that would end up being something that harmed the village. Probably not. As far as he could tell, the only thing Sasuke ever wanted was to grow stronger and get revenge on his brother. That goal didn’t align with causing enough trouble in a hidden village to get hindered by people trying to stop him. Or so Shikamaru hoped.

After he finished training for the day, Shikamaru wandered over to the training ground he used to train at with team ten. He leaned casually against a tree far enough away that he wouldn’t be intruding. He watched with a sense of nostalgia as Asuma tried to cajole Choji and Neji into practicing the chakra exercise Sasuke was running through so easily.

Shikamaru felt a pang in his heart at the scene. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Asuma since he’d been sent to the past, but it was still a strange feeling. He didn’t know whether to accept that Asuma was alive or to still think of him as dead. Logically, as everything was now, Asuma had never died so Shikamaru had no reason to continue to think he was dead. It just wasn’t that easy. Shikamaru had already fully mourned his sensei and even enacted revenge against Hidan. He felt unbalanced by Asuma’s new alive status and had as much trouble accepting his life as he had accepting Asuma’s death.

Completely unaware of Shikamaru’s turmoil concerning him, Asuma strode over to Shikamaru after successfully getting Choji and Neji to participate in their own training. “I don’t usually allow spectators,” Asuma said as he leant against a tree across from Shikamaru.

“Usually?” Shikamaru asked not trusting himself to say more. It suited Sasuke’s character to be terse anyways.

“Well, no one’s actually tried before, so really it’s never.”

“I’m waiting for Ino,” Shikamaru explained shortly.

Asuma stood silently squinting at Shikamaru for a bit. Shikamaru tried to keep his expression perfectly neutral. “Next time, just wait for Ino elsewhere.” Shikamaru nodded curtly, and Asuma went back to his team prodding Neji who’d stopped the exercise already. Shikamaru frowned. He wasn’t that much of a slouch. Neji was laying it on a bit too thick.

As team ten’s training ended, Shikamaru headed to Sasuke and walked with him as he departed. “Did you need something?” Sasuke asked indifferently as Shikamaru fell into step with him.

“I just wanted to know what that little stunt you pulled yesterday was all about.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I just wanted my own body back for awhile.”

Shikamaru hmmed disbelievingly. “And it was so important to get your body back temporarily that you ignored Ino’s warnings?”

“Of course not. I’m not risking my mind. I know how to perform the jutsu correctly. I didn’t stay nearly long enough for it to be a danger.” Sasuke glanced at Shikamaru out of the corner of his eye. “Was there anything else?”

“I don’t know how you expect me to trust you when you attacked me for some unknown purpose.”

“I don’t care if you trust me,” Sasuke said with the air of someone secure with the knowledge that there was nothing Shikamaru could do either way. “Just don’t get in my way.” Sasuke split ways with Shikamaru who let him go not seeing anything else to be done about Sasuke yet. Shikamaru had something else to do for the time being.

When adopting the identity of an existing person, there were more opportunities to slip up than when adopting an invented identity. Any person Shikamaru came into contact with that knew the person had some amount of knowledge of the quirks, mannerisms, and past of the person. An incorrect response to the wrong question could completely jeopardize a disguise. That was why it was so important for them to gather all information they could about Mai Hyuuga. Any little bit helped Ino to avoid suspicion when she inevitably invaded Mai’s mind. The more knowledge she had, the more she could improvise without detection. Shikamaru didn’t envy her task.

There was something about disguising herself as a completely made up person that Shikamaru found ten times easier than mimicking an actual person. With a new, created identity, Shikamaru had more leeway in his actions. He only had to adopt a base personality and develop it naturally the more time he spent in disguise. The hardest part of that was keeping track of any background he gave to his character, but that was second nature to him by this point.

Shikamaru’s current disguise was a thirty year old man with short brown hair. His name was Dai Shimada. He had a slim build and a short stature. Unlike Shikamaru, Dai grew up in a small village near the east border of the Land of Fire. He worked as a travelling merchant and stopped in Konoha as a tourist on his way back home. Shikamaru let Amari know the short version of his back story when he visited her bakery in his new disguise.

It was easy for Shikamaru to make Dai a regular, faking a certain fondness for Amari’s sweet rolls. He made himself enough of a regular that Amari chatted familiarly with him when he frequented the bakery. By the time Ino came back from her mission, Shikamaru already built up a rapport with Amari.

He still didn’t have any important information to share with Ino and Neji, but he did learn how Mai and Amari formed a friendship despite their vast differences in backgrounds and lifestyles. The other woman Shikamaru saw the two at the bar with turned out to be Amari’s sister who graduated from the academy before failing her genin test. Mai and her were friends during their academy years and stayed as such even after they took different paths. Shikamaru knew he couldn’t pry for more information about Mai without rousing suspicion, so he let his investigation end there momentarily.

Ino occupied Shikamaru’s mind with other issues the day she got back to Konoha from her mission. After another tiring day of pretending to be the genin version of Sasuke, Shikamaru got back to his temporary place to find Ino sitting on the couch with an expression Shikamaru was all too familiar with. When Ino got angry, she made herself obvious to everyone. Her face twisted up in a snarl, she yelled and screeched, and one could expect her to start throwing the nearest object to her. When Ino encountered a person or problem she thought particularly vile, she grew apoplectic rather than just angry. In those cases, Ino’s face became devoid of all expression as the rage boiled up inside her, undetectable to anyone who didn’t know Ino’s idiosyncrasies. In that case, it was only when Ino managed her anger enough to think rationally that she acted. Whatever retaliation Ino carried out would end up ten times worse than whatever shouting or flinging of items she might perform for lesser slights.

The blank expression that Shikamaru came to associate with the apoplectic version of Ino met his gaze. “Did something happen on your mission?” Shikamaru asked curiously.

“I successfully used one of my projection seals on an opponent,” Ino said without any of her usual excitement for the progression of her seal skills.

“I see.” Shikamaru knew how to detect Ino’s moods, but he never figured out how to deal with them. He decided to go about his business and wait for Ino to bring up the problem on her own. Needling her for information didn’t seem like a good idea considering the state she was in.

Instead, Shikamaru started preparing some food and tea. He was famished. Ino followed behind him into the kitchen, took a seat at the table, and pulled one of the pages of notes towards her. “Is this your work?” she asked holding up the same seal Sasuke had distracted Shikamaru with the previous night. Why was everyone drawn to that piece of paper out of all the ones on the table?

“Yes.”

“It needs some work. Your presentation is sloppy, and the chakra feels weak.”

“I’m aware of that. Thank you.” Shikamaru snatched the seal out of Ino’s hands and tossed it. “Are you going to tell me what’s bugging you or are you going to find another one of my beginner seals to criticize?”

Ino straightened up and gestured to the tea Shikamaru had brewed. “Aren’t you going to offer me some?” Shikamaru took out a second cup and filled it. After he placed it in front of Ino, she took a small sip, set it down, and looked back to Shikamaru. “You know how Mai has a ten year old son?”

“Yes,” Shikamaru said slowly, unsure if this was another unrelated question or if Ino was finally getting to the heart of the matter. “What about him?”

“He received his curse seal at the age of three.”

“Isn’t that the typical age for a branch member to receive the seal?”

“Pretty much. If there is a living heir to the main family that has yet to turn three, a branch kid’s forehead will remain unblemished until that heir’s third birthday. Otherwise, they receive the seal when they themselves turn three.” Ino took another sip of her tea as she waited for a comment from Shikamaru.

“That must be brutal for a young child,” Shikamaru said trying to root out the reason for Ino’s anger. It didn’t seem likely that this was the reason since Ino clearly knew all this long before, but he knew she hated any misdeeds against children.

Ino chuckled darkly. “It’s better to be done while their young before the mind is more developed. Children’s minds are more adaptable to the foreign chakra invading their minds to carry out the seal’s intended functions. Older minds fight harder against the restrictions, causing a backlash from the seal. When the seal is applied to older Hyuuga, they sometimes die.”

Shikamaru sat down across from Ino with his food, his mind buzzing with the implication of what he just learned. “How old is old enough to be exposed to that risk?”

“There’s not an exact age but around eight,” Ino answered with a sardonic smile as she watched Shikamaru come to the conclusion she expected him to.

“So if Hanabi or Hinata ever took the curse seal, they might die?”

“That’s exactly why Hiashi worked so hard to continue keeping the curse seal off either of his daughters after he already made the mistake of not allowing one of them to receive the curse seal when they were younger. Well, that and because he’s trying to end that practice all together,” Ino said.

“And what does this have to do with Mai’s son? You said he already has the curse seal.”

“Yes, he does already have the curse seal. And I’m sure if he didn’t, Mai would allow the elders of the clan to force the seal onto him whether it risked her son’s life or not. Unless she’s a complete hypocrite. She’s certainly pushing hard enough for Hinata to get the curse seal put on her soon.” Ino slammed her hands on the table and pushed herself up. That was it. She was about to explode. “Do you know what’s going on in the Hyuuga clan right now? Do you know what could drive the Hyuuga to want to risk a child’s life?”

“What?” Shikamaru asked reverting to the passive, cooperative mode that worked best when dealing with a ranting Ino. All he had to do was participate with the correct one word responses.

“Hinata got hurt on her last mission, a bit of chakra exhaustion, but it was while fighting civilians. Now, the majority of the clan thinks she’s not worthy of being the clan heir and a number of the Hyuuga are pushing for the implementation of the curse seal as soon as possible.” Ino started pacing around the kitchen, hands clenched. “They won’t be able to do it -Hiashi holds too much sway with the elders- but it’s infuriating to hear them talk about maybe getting Hinata killed like it’s nothing.”

“They talk about this in front of you?”

Ino stopped pacing and pierced Shikamaru with an icy stare. “Depends on who you mean by ‘they’. The main house doesn’t speak about main family politics in front of the branch family. It’s not for the branch family to know,” Ino said acerbically. “Most of what I hear is from Mai and her ilk.”

“And the rest?”

Ino smirked. “Sometimes, I spy on the main family meetings.”

Shikamaru tensed at that in concern. “You spy on meetings you’re not allowed at with people that can see through walls and in almost every direction?”

“Don’t worry I won’t make that mistake again,” Ino spat out as she kicked at one of the chairs.

Shikamaru clenched his jaw. He needed Ino to explain that. “Ino, what happened? No more beating around the bush, just tell me.”

“They finally caught me listening in on a meeting,” Ino said tonelessly. “I got to learn firsthand what the curse seal does.”

Shikamaru stood up abruptly. “They used it on you?”

“Sit down. I’m fine. The pain’s already gone,” Ino said folding her arms over her chest. “It was staggering. It’s disgusting that they inflict that sort of pain on adults for minor infractions and on children ever. When Neji told me about the pain, he definitely downplayed it, but now I know. I can’t believe this has gone on so long unchecked.”

Shikamaru leaned against his chair studying Ino. “You know you can’t do anything to change this. It’s not something you have any control over.”

“Of course I know that,” Ino said, her eyes flashing with irritation. “If there was something I could do about the curse seal, I would have done it even before this happened. I hate it for what it did to Neji.”

The two stood in silence for awhile, each thinking over the conversation. Shikamaru knew what Ino would do with her rage without any outlet to exact retribution. She would latch onto whatever distraction she could and throw herself full force into her next goal. Shikamaru supposed that distraction would end up being the same goal as before this incident, Mai Hyuuga.

“I learned a bit about Mai from a civilian friend she has,” Shikamaru said. Ino glanced at him inquisitively. “It’s not much, but it may help.” Shikamaru explained what he learned, Ino frowning slightly as he did so.

“You’re right. It’s not much,” she said when Shikamaru finished his explanation. “But it does add to the puzzle that is Mai Hyuuga. I distinctly remember her talking down on ninja that remain friends with civilians. She said that civilians were too frivolous to understand ninja. It’s a strange position for someone who conspicuously has civilians for friends.”

“I’m guessing she doesn’t really consider them to be her friends,” Shikamaru said.

Ino scrunched her brows and thought. “Maybe not.” She shook her head. “It probably doesn’t matter. I’m not getting anywhere with finding out what Mai does in the lower levels of the tower. If I’m going to impersonate her to infiltrate the tower, then I need to invade her mind.”

Shikamaru sucked in a breath. That was risky. Probing the mind of a skilled ninja while preventing said ninja from even realizing that the probe took place was within Ino’s capabilities, but it was never a guarantee. It seemed they had even more planning to do. “We’ll meet up with Neji tomorrow and plan this out.”

With Neji, Ino, and Shikamaru spitting out ideas and picking apart all the flaws, the three eventually reached a consensus on how to carry out their objective. They would implement their plan in a week’s time. Or so they thought. Unfortunately, the plan got temporarily waylaid by an unforeseen circumstance.

Shikamaru watched boredly as Naruto lobbied loudly for a C rank mission after reaching the limits of his patience when team seven got given another tedious D rank. As expected, Iruka and Kakashi reprimanded him and the Hokage launched into an unnecessary explanation on why he granted new unaccomplished genin the lowest ranked missions. In typical Naruto fashion, the orange clad genin ignored the lecture and went back to demanding a more adventurous mission. Not wanting to leave the village for the length of a C rank, Shikamaru was glad that the Hokage didn’t assign missions based on the complaints of genin.

“If you want it that much, I’ll give you a C rank mission,” the Hokage stated after Naruto finished campaigning. Shikamaru couldn’t believe his ears. Apparently the methods for assigning missions were a lot more lax than he had thought. Even Sakura was staring at the Hokage askance as if she couldn’t believe that the leader of her village was susceptible to whining.

“Ooo, what is it? Are we going to be guarding a princess?”

“No. You’re delivering a message to the wind daimyo,” the Hokage said taking the wind out of Naruto’s sails. It made sense to Shikamaru. As the rulers of their countries, any message to a daimyo is automatically classified as at least a C rank though the deliveries rarely led to any trouble. It was the perfect step for transitioning to higher level missions.

“What?” Naruto exclaimed. “That’s not any better than the missions we’re already doing.”

“Naruto! Stop talking back to the Hokage,” Iruka scolded. Shikamaru tuned out the ensuing banter. He knew that he’d have to take missions outside of Konoha eventually, but he hadn’t expected it so soon. He and Ino were supposed to start the first stages of the plan to infiltrate Mai’s mind in a couple days. He would have to send a message to Neji and Ino warning them about his mission. At least, when he got back, they could carry on with the Mai mission as planned. The plan was not time dependent.


	7. Chapter 7

Ino sat up in her seat, and triggered the byakugan that she currently had control over.  As a seasoned body swapper, Ino had experience with many different types of vision, mainly of the various qualities of standard human eyesight.  The most disorienting changes in vision happened when Ino used her techniques on animals.  One of her most memorable and incredible experiences with a new type of vision was when she mind controlled a dragonfly on one of her missions.

The Hyuuga liked people to think they had 360 degree vision, but they really only saw about 350 degrees with their byakugan.  On the other hand, dragonflies did have complete 360 degree vision.  As Ino possessed the dragonfly, she found herself dazed by her complete field of view.  No matter which direction her target went in, she could see him.  The dragonfly eyes had a number of other glorious and jarring features, like the extra visible colors and the mosaic pattern, but the full field of vision was what Ino recalled when she first started using the byakugan.

Somehow, it was more unsettling to see in almost all directions than to have either her usual vision or the full vision of the dragonfly.  Something about having one small section of the world cut off from her brought out the paranoia in Ino.  With the one blind spot constantly teasing her, Ino kept feeling as if something sinister was lurking in that blind spot.  It didn’t make much sense to be so worried with more vision than she usually had, but being so tantalizingly close to seeing in all directions made everything Ino couldn’t see more significant.

As Ino sat in the simple sitting room in Neji’s place, spying on Mai with the byakugan, she couldn’t help the paranoia that swept over her.  If someone in her blind spot was watching her then, he would note how suspiciously she was acting.  Hyuuga didn’t generally sit alone in a room in the compound, watching their fellow clanmates through the walls.  Ino turned her head slightly to compensate for her missing vision though the action just created a new blind spot for Ino to fret over.

Ino supposed she should attribute the majority of her paranoia to the task she, Shikamaru, and Neji had imposed on her -the task she was currently in the middle of- but Ino knew that didn’t account for all of it.  Never before in a mission had she felt the same.  It wasn’t that Ino was more fearful than usual or that the stakes were higher.  Her unprecedented discomfort was the result of the buildup of emotions that started ever since she woke up in the wrong time and body, which was precisely why she was using her byakugan in the Hyuuga compound and watching Mai.

Mai Hyuuga didn’t have much of a routine that she adhered to.  Seemingly, Mai spent everyday doing as she wanted by whim.  Ino knew that was highly unlikely, and she could probably discover a pattern if she had more time to watch Mai, but the whole reason for infiltrating the security was to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.  That’s why they were making a risky move and why they chose the specific day carefully.

Mai had one obvious activity that she did at exactly the same time every week.  Every Thursday, after the academy let out, Mai picked up her son to train him for a couple of hours.  At the moment, Mai’s son was still sitting at the kitchen table eating the breakfast his mother cooked for the family.  The three family members ate together as Mai’s husband rattled on about his work as a clerk.  Unfortunately for Ino, Mai had never talked about her own work to her family, at least not during the time Ino had been observing her.

Ino turned her head back to its original position to changed the blind spot again.  There was still nothing to worry about.  Ino stopped thinking about the possibility of someone spying on her as Mai’s family finished up breakfast.  Keeping the byakugan on, Ino opened the window in the room.  She walked over to a box in the corner and opened that as well.  A bird peeked up at her, and Ino quickly lashed out with the chakra strings she readied before opening the box.

“Sorry, bird.  I promise I’ll let you go after this,”  Ino whispered softly as she formed the seal for her mind transfer technique.  She needed to stay in the compound to keep an eye on Mai and make sure she didn’t follow after her son, but she also needed to inform Neji and Shikamaru about her son’s departure.

A bird’s vision was another matter entirely.  Ino maintained a field of vision similar to a typical human, but she could see detail much farther.  As such, Ino was able to see the three zinnias in a vase sitting on the table of Sasuke’s kitchen.  Ino cursed mentally as she couldn’t speak out loud as a bird.  Ino perched briefly on a branch before making up her mind and flying off to give the signal to Neji.

In Ino’s position, Shikamaru would have called the plan a loss and cancelled it until a replacement plan could be made.  Ino was much more impulsive than her teammate.  She trusted Shikamaru’s intelligence and judgment, but he would sit around and plan forever if time allowed.  Ino knew few plans were carried out flawlessly, and she did not want to delay this even if they had a lack of time constraints.  The sooner she got her hands on the scrolls, the better.

After Neji signaled back to Ino that he’d gotten her signal, Ino landed on the ground and pushed her mind out of the bird back to her own body.  Mai was still bustling around the kitchen, clearing up dishes.  The blind spot in the back of Ino’s neck still burned.  

_ Get ahold of yourself, Ino.  No one’s watching you.  No one has any reason to suspect you of anything. _

Ino watched with distaste as Mai checked her headband in the mirror.  She used to assume that Neji and the other branch members hid their curse seals of their own volition.  It was sort of true, but Ino learned better early on in her friendship with Neji.

Ino and Neji started their training in medical ninjutsu around the same time.  It was only natural for Ino to take up medical ninjutsu with the excellent chakra control she possessed.  Neji also had good chakra control, but he never would have taken medical training under normal circumstances.  Tsunade took to encouraging teams to have at least one member trained in basic medic jutsu.  On Neji’s team, he was the only one even slightly suited for medical.

As a result of sharing their training at the same time, Ino and Neji saw a lot of each other.  At first, they barely interacted with each other even if they did have to work together regularly.  Ino and Neji didn’t have many interests in common to converse about.  Even so, Ino couldn’t push back her curiosity enough to prevent herself from asking Neji an inappropriate and personal question.

Ino’s curiosity was piqued as she watched Neji carefully replace the headband around the forehead of a patient that was a member of the branch family.  Neji’s face was pretty unreadable as he stepped back, but Ino could tell his thoughts were dark.  As Ino followed Neji into the supply room, she knew she had to ask lest the question bugged her for the rest of the day.

“Why do the branch members always cover their seal?”  Ino asked bluntly, not one to mince words unless she was using discretion on a mission.  Neji turned his face slowly toward Ino, not looking angry like Ino thought the question might make him.

“Would you want to show off your greatest misery?”  It was a legitimate explanation, but it wasn’t enough for Ino.  During the chunin exams, Neji had unveiled the seal precisely to show off the source of his misery.  He couldn’t have been the only bitter branch member to want to display the atrocities of the Hyuuga clan to the village.

Deciding to press her luck, Ino continued her line of questioning.  “Then why did you reveal the curse seal to everyone at the chunin exams?”

Neji pressed his lips together and focused his attention on the IV solutions on the shelf.  Ino figured Neji was already done with the conversation, so she gathered the appropriate accompanying supplies.  As Ino prepared to leave the supply room, Neji spoke back up halting her in her tracks.  “They don’t want the curse seal to be in the forefront of the minds of the village.”

Ino clutched the supplies she’d gathered in her hands.  “Are you saying that the main family makes you hide it?  Did you get in trouble for showing it?”

Neji stared down at the objects Ino carried, silently.  Suddenly, he reached out and took the bandages from her.  “We should get back to the patient.”  He spun around and headed back in the direction they came, leaving Ino to hurry on after him.  She supposed Neji had reached his limit on the topic.  

Ino was proven wrong once again as she set up the IV while Neji waited for her to finish.  “The main family says it’s not mandatory to hide the curse seal, only encouraged.”  Ino stilled the hand that was swabbing the vein with an alcohol wipe and glanced up at Neji.  He was staring fixedly at the arm Ino was holding.  

Ino continued disinfecting as she spoke.  “But what they say is different from what they practice?” she guessed.

“There is always backlash when a member of the branch family goes against the wishes of the main family.”

“Was there backlash for you?”  After asking her question, Ino waited for Neji’s response, needle poised over the vein.  

“Mainly just disapproval.  I have more leeway than other branch members since the main family sees potential in me, or so I’ve heard from some of the elders.”  

Ino frowned at Neji’s bitter tone.  She’d seen during the chunin exams how negatively affected Neji was by the seal, but hearing the same tone from him even after he’d reconciled with his clan made Ino rethink the importance of the curse seal.  Suddenly, she understood why hiding the curse seal was “encouraged” by the main family.  It was much too easy to forget about the seal and pretend it didn’t exist when it was out of sight.  Talking about the seal with Neji and directly seeing the pain it caused him made Ino more reluctant to leave the situation alone, not that she could do anything about it anyways.  But if the Hyuuga clan started using the seal in public where anyone could see, Ino would bet that the village would put pressure on the clan to end the practice.  The main family was right to pretend that the curse seal didn’t exist in public.

Ino finished up taping the tubing and stood upright, facing Neji.  “Is anyone trying to stop the usage of the curse seal?”

Neji lifted his gaze to meet Ino’s eyes, completely expressionless.  “Very few people.  It’s just the way it is, and it will continue to be that way.”

Apparently, Neji’s defeatist attitude prevailed.  Ino shook her head.  “It’s not right.  Someone should put a stop to it.”

Neji laughed shortly and derisively.  “Just forget about it.  It’s nothing to do with you.”

He was right.  The whole thing was a Hyuuga issue.  As a Yamanaka, Ino had no business even commenting on the seal.  Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially when she had a Hyuuga branch member that was plagued by the seal working with her every week.

Ino’s distaste for the curse seal grew rapidly as she learned more about it and grew closer to Neji.  The fact that the main family branded the branch members and then made them cover up the seal they’d forced onto them boiled Ino’s blood.  When Ino had ended up possessing Neji, she felt the urge to ignore the rules and keep the seal uncovered, but her rationality prevailed.

Watching Mai get ready to leave the house brought back Ino’s anger even more now that she had experienced the pain of the curse seal herself especially since it was Mai.  Mai’s support for the curse seal sickened Ino.  She couldn’t understand how someone that had felt that pain could wish that on anyone else.  

Ino pushed her thoughts and her hatred for Mai aside as Mai left the house.  Ino had a job to do now.  She left the Hyuuga compound, went somewhere concealed, disguised herself, and headed towards Sasuke’s apartment.  When Ino was sure no one could see her, she snuck into the apartment.  Upon seeing her own image standing beside Neji, Ino balked.

“What’s he doing here?”  Ino asked Neji.  Even though she kept her gaze firmly on Neji, Ino could see Sasuke smirking at her out of the corner of her eye.  Ino hoped she never looked that smackable when she was herself.

“He followed me,”  Neji admitted grudgingly. 

“The three of you have obviously been up to something for the past month.  I want to know what it is,”  Sasuke said staring intermittently between Neji and Ino.

“Yeah, we’re trying to learn sealing.  You know, the thing we were all working on until you decided to pout and go off doing your own thing,”  Ino said hoping Sasuke would accept that.

“If that’s all, why are you being so secretive about it?”

“Why did you use the mind transfer technique on Shikamaru?  And what have you been up to lately?”  Ino countered.  Sasuke and Ino stared unblinkingly at each other waiting for the other to speak.  Ino held a lot of embarrassment over her past feelings for Sasuke, and she refused to be a pushover again when it came to him.

Finally, Neji ended the silence.  “Where’s Shikamaru?”

Ino flicked her gaze back to Neji.  “He’s on a mission.”  Neji sent a disapproving look back at Ino, clearly not on board with continuing the plan with Shikamaru gone, but he couldn’t say anything with Sasuke there.

“Tell me what you three are up to,”  Sasuke demanded.

Ino was fed up.  “Why should we?  We can’t trust you.  And you still haven’t told us what you’re up to.”

“I can’t trust any of you either.  You picked a fight with me as soon as you could, and Shikamaru punched me after I won the fight fairly, and you’ve all made it clear that you dislike me.  Why would I share my information with you?”  Sasuke pointed out.

“Because we have the same goal!”  Ino exclaimed throwing up her arms.  

“That goes both ways,”  Sasuke commented drily. 

“Quiet, both of you,”  Neji said monotonously.  Ino threw him a nasty glare which he ignored.  “Sasuke, if we tell you what we have planned, will you tell us what you have planned?”

“Neji,”  Ino started, but Neji sent her a look that Ino easily read as asking her to trust him.  Ino sighed and turned to Sasuke for his response.

Sasuke mulled over the question with a blank expression.  “I’ll tell you anything relevant to our situation,”  he responded after awhile.

“Yeah, right,”  Ino muttered.  

“Deal,”  Neji agreed.  

“Neji, you can’t be serious.  Are you forgetting that he betrayed the village?”  Ino reminded him.

“No, I’m not.  I don’t want to include him either, but it will be easier if we all work together.  Besides, he can replace Shikamaru’s part in the plan.”

Ino pressed her lips together tightly as she thought it over.  She decided to trust Neji’s judgment.  “Fine.  We’ll need to make a few alterations, but it will work.”

During their exchange, Sasuke just observed the two quietly with his arms crossed, waiting for their conversation to play out.  “Do you want to explain?”  he asked after they were done.

Ino left the explanations to Neji, not particularly enthused about including Sasuke into their plans.  When Neji finished telling Sasuke everything, Sasuke chipped in for giving recommendations on altering the plan with his inclusion.  Ino partook in that part of the conversation if only because she had no choice at that part.  She remained uncertain about how wise it was to bring a traitor in on a plan to infiltrate high security levels and steal secret scrolls.  Only Ino’s confidence that Sasuke had no ill will towards the village let Ino have any peace over the matter.  He hated Itachi, and that was it.  Itachi was the one thing behind every one of Sasuke’s motives, thoughts, and actions.  Of that, Ino felt certain.

When the time came, Neji and Sasuke followed the tracking seal Neji had placed on Mai’s son on his way to the academy.  Their job was to place genjutsus on Mai without her noticing, so that when Ino went up against her in disguise, she wouldn’t see through the disguise with the byakugan.  Ino couldn’t use her mind transfer technique since anyone she transferred to would count as a witness.

Ino walked over to where she felt the signal from the tracking seal disguised as a nondescript, young man.  She hid her presence as long as she could, but Mai noticed her approaching a little before she wanted.  Mai activated her byakugan and signaled for her son to get behind her as Ino dashed out towards Mai.  This is where it would have been helpful to have Shikamaru around to paralyze Mai with his shadow jutsu, but Sasuke did well enough sneaking behind Mai and using the lightning move he’d used on Ino during their fight.  As Sasuke caught Mai off guard, Neji gently hit the right pressure point to knock her son out.  It wouldn’t do if he saw Ino using her mind searching jutsu.

When Mai went down, Ino rushed to her and placed her hands on her head.  Ino carefully dug for the thoughts she sought, ended the jutsu, and pulled her hands back off of Mai’s head.  She looked up at Neji with a grim smile, pretending that Sasuke wasn’t there.  “I’ve got what we need,”  she told him.


End file.
